


Episode 9

by kateyboosh



Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: A little bit of everything really, And he's extra annoyed with it, And the back of the Zooniverse transport van, And the beginning of the flat times, Apologies, Banter, Because that's my MO, Emotions, Fossil is a glorious agent of chaos, Gratuitous mischief and monkey business, Howard Moon man of action, Katey adds ridiculous things to the Zooniverse map, M/M, Naboo is a glorious agent of responsibility, Office Supplies, Sad boy Zoo Times, Sorry Naboo, Specifically the end of the Zoo Times, The Return of Chaotic Fossil, The Zoo Times, Vince Noir rock n roll star, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 30,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24134734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kateyboosh/pseuds/kateyboosh
Summary: What happened between Series 1 and 2? Why did the Zooniverse close? Why are Vince and Howard so sexy and half naked in Series 2?All these questions from the lovely concupiscence66 answered inside, along with healthy doses of mischief, mayhem, fluff, angst, and smut, references to later events in S2 and S3, and blatant disregard for the Zooniverse map.Connie, thank you for the challenge of this prompt. I sincerely hope I did it justice, and that you enjoy reading.
Relationships: Howard Moon/Vince Noir
Comments: 55
Kudos: 13
Collections: Bringing Back the Boosh 2020 Fic Exchange





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [concupiscence66](https://archiveofourown.org/users/concupiscence66/gifts).



> A week after the events of Hitcher, Howard Moon, head keeper, all-around man of action, and irresistible cream poet, prepares for zoo inspection. What could go wrong? (Spoiler alert: a lot.)

It’s an ordinary day at the Zooniverse. The cages have been swept, the seed has been distributed, the morning’s Porpoise Derby has been run. There are a few patrons milling around the Reptile House in the late afternoon sun, and a cluster of schoolchildren at Naboo’s kiosk, pointing at the lion masks and throwing peanuts at each other. And at the animals. And at anything that moves, really.

Howard is sitting at the small table in the keeper’s hut with a steaming cup of tea at his elbow, and clipboard, calendar, and pocket planner in front of him. It’s been a week since he and Vince returned from their last adventure to the Zoo for Animal Offenders via the Forest of Death, two since the disastrous gig he’d played with Vince when he was possessed by the Spirit of Jazz onstage. Three weeks since he made any progress past the first sentence of his novel, his typewriter sitting dusty and neglected in the corner.

Howard shivers, nearly knocking his full teacup off of the lip of the table, remembering the sudden appearance of Charlie at the party that was held to celebrate Vince’s publishing deal three weeks ago. Mostly, he remembers the weird, gelatinous…  _ chunks _ of pink that Charlie had left behind after he disappeared. That Howard had to clean up later on. By himself.

He shakes his head and focuses on the work laid out in front of him instead. “Zoo Inspection, 3PM” is written in large, bright red letters on the calendar, circled twice, an arrow pointing to today’s date. Funny. It’s going on four already, and it’s not like Bainbridge to be late for his appointment.

Howard thinks back to the last zoo inspection. It was three weeks ago, on the day of Vince’s party. He’d been so busy making the punch and hanging fairy lights and hemming the trousers for his writer’s caddy outfit. The plaid pattern made it difficult for him to keep his stitches straight, so he hadn’t had time to sweep the panda enclosure to his usual high head keeper standards.

Bainbridge had noticed, of course. He strode through the zoo gates, stroking his offensively thick moustache, turning on the heel of his boot to poke Howard’s chest with his swagger stick and admonish him for the excess hay. 

“What do you think this zoo is, Moon, a Milanese fairground during the  _ an _ -cient harvest festival? Clean up this disgrace or I’ll knock you back to newts before teatime tomorrow.”

Howard looks at his watch again, pulling the same sour face he’d shot Bainbridge as he was walking away and commenting on Howard needing to hurry up to starch his ugly girl-friend’s outfit before the party. Howard had scoffed; who pronounced “girlfriend” as two separate words, anyway?

Howard figures he’ll wait until 4:30 for Bainbridge to arrive, and settles in to start drafting next week’s feeding schedule.

*

When Howard leaves the keeper’s hut half an hour later, he hears the rumbling of an engine at the Zooniverse gates. Bainbridge, then, keeping him on his toes, an hour and a half late altogether. 

Howard tugs at the bottom hem of his jacket to straighten it, and squares his shoulders, stopping to polish the latch of an empty cage with his sleeve. Absolutely nothing is out of place today. He’s checked and double checked, then tripled checked his double check to be sure.

On his way to the front gate, he deposits some windblown peanut packets in the bins along the walkway, and straightens the sign pointing to the Chameleon Boudoir. He even backtracks to pluck an unsightly, low-hanging leaf from the branch of one of the trees. Howard might not be a famous author or musician (yet), but no way Bainbridge is going to have anything to say to him today about zookeeping standards, no sir.

Howard grins, slipping his hands into his pockets, standing up straighter to reach his full height. He walks jauntily along for a few steps, considering his bright future. He’s head keeper now, but who knows where he might be in a few years. He does enough to assist Fossil that he could practically roll his CV into the typewriter in the keeper’s hut right now and add “Assistant Zoo Manager” to fill up a few lines of blank space. 

No, scratch that, might as well get straight to the point as long as he’s being completely truthful. Where's the harm in “Zoo Co-Manager and Partner?”

Howard’s dreaming of the day he can sit in his own office, in his comfy chair, behind his custom-built wooden desk, “Mr. Howard Moon, Sole Zoo Manager, Esquire” etched into his nameplate. He’d be fielding questions from reporters from Panda Monthly and Keeper’s Digest on how he took the Zooniverse from an obscure property to a world-class destination, how the revolutionary breeding programs have been winning acclaim left and right, how he single-handedly discovered several new species of wild hummingbird hawk-moths while adventuring in a remote and ancient forest in Spain. 

How he swept his wife, the lovely and glowing Mrs. Gideon-Moon, off of her feet after a long and charming courtship, full of candlelight and rose petals and epic poems. Oh yes, just like a true man of action slash zoo manager slash cream poet would.

He’s almost to the front gates when he’s sucked out of his daydream by a loud crunching sound underfoot. It’s too insistent to be a bit of gravel on the pathway, and while he’s pretty sure that he does have the most powerful step of any man in his size range in Leeds, it’s not strong enough to unintentionally crush rock. 

Howard looks down, brow furrowed, and lifts his boot to find…  _ peanuts _ ?

_ No. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. _

Howard’s expression dissolves from confusion to shock when he sees the courtyard. The small pile of peanuts he stepped on is just the tail end of a trail leading to an  _ ocean _ of peanuts. It’s ankle deep as he wades in around the edges, but the visitor map and the gazebo at the center of the courtyard are half-buried. 

He’s up to his waist by Naboo’s kiosk, one sliding window hanging half off the hinge. He slogs through the peanuts in horror, in what feels like slow-motion, moving like a desperate man spotting an oasis in the distance when he's knee-deep in quicksand.

Howard’s nearly to the gates when he feels a shower of peanuts scatter across his face. The culprit is a wiry blond boy dressed in a school uniform, tie askew and blazer knotted around his waist. He catches the expression on Howard’s face snapping from despair to irritation, and he smirks. The little brat well and truly  _ smirks _ at Howard, before blowing him a raspberry. He scampers out of the gates and onto the idling bus outside.

Howard is relieved to see that it’s not Bainbridge waiting outside the gates with his marching orders, but as the bus pulls away, he feels panic edging in. 

If Bainbridge does arrive in the next five seconds, how on earth is he going to explain this? Enrichment for the elephants? 

_ Shit _ . Fossil swapped the real elephants for two statues after he was convinced that they’d be more efficient on the food budget, and the enclosure could be better used to store office supplies.

Maybe Bainbridge will ignore the plague of peanuts if Howard does, if he blusters and puts on an air of bravado and pretends there’s nothing there. 

Howard tries to take a step forward and nearly trips in the pile of nuts. A resounding "no" to that approach, then.

So all the responsibility for this disaster falls to Howard Moon, thwarted from his destiny as a record-breaking zoo professional by a mischievous group of mere schoolchildren.

Howard can’t think of any decent excuse or invention or story to explain this one away, but when he wipes honey-roasted sugar crumbs off of his face in a desperate attempt to at least look presentable himself, his brain shouts “VINCE!” at top volume. 

If there’s anyone who can help him out of this, it’s Vince, the king of flimsy yet charming excuses. Vince certainly has a way with words, and with the way he twists his hips, and toes the ground, and looks up with his big, innocent, blue eyes that could sway favorable opinions in his direction. 

Just yesterday, he told Howard he was late for his assigned cage cleaning duty because a family of moles fell asleep on his shoulder, right, and everyone knows you can’t move when they take up residence or you’re done for.  _ They’d be in your hair, grabbin’ at your face, swipin’ down your front like that with their little claws; it would be a right disaster, Howard. _

Howard had let him off with a stern warning, and after a pause, had taken Vince’s hot hand from where it was resting on his stomach and wrapped it around a broom handle instead, guiding him towards a manky cage.

When Vince told him he couldn’t possibly help Howard clean up the sticky pink gobs of…  _ matter _ that Charlie had left behind because he had author’s rights, yeah, and he was invokin’ the moral ones (whatever that meant), Howard had sighed and tied the apron strings a little tighter around his waist, pulled the thickest pair of elbow-length gloves he could find onto his hands, and went at the gooey mess armed with soap and bin bags and buckets. 

And as a fledgling author and naturally curious individual himself, Howard looked up moral rights after he'd thoroughly scrubbed the courtyard and disinfected himself. He discovered that they were based on the concept that the author’s work is the creative extension of their personality. He tried not to wonder what it meant when Vince had told him Charlie was always with him, and liked watching him when he slept.

And last week, when Howard heard the heels of Vince’s cowboy boots clacking around on the lid of the bins outside the window to the shower stalls while Howard was rinsing off after the Porpoise Derby, he bought it when Vince told him he was in hot pursuit, followin’ a butterfly up onto the roof. 

When Howard adjusted his towel and asked where it had gone, Vince gulped. After Howard reminded him what he said he was looking for -  _ a butterfly, right? Vince? _ \- he’d told Howard, oh, right, it was a rare species of invisible butterfly, perfect to lure in and put on special display in the courtyard. 

_ Really draw visitors in, Howard. No other zoo’s got an invisible butterfly in the insect enclosure! _

"Right,” Howard had returned, opening and then closing his mouth before he could ask how or why anyone would display something invisible and expect people to pay  _ not _ to see it.

He still helped Vince clamber up onto the roof when he turned around and looked over his shoulder and said, “Give us a boost, Howard.” He helped him down a few minutes later when Vince sighed and told him it was no use, the butterfly was probably halfway to the jungles by now, and anyway, didn’t he want to finish his shower? He would be happy to wait around outside while Howard scrubbed up, just in case the, uhhh… 

“Butterfly?” Howard supplied as he tightened the towel around his waist. “Yeah, right! Thanks, Howard. Uh, just in case the  _ butterfly _ comes back,” Vince had responded, tonguing at his canine.

Howard freezes in place when a rustling sound in the peanuts behind him snaps him back to his present misery. It’s followed by a quiet tapping on the countertop of Naboo's kiosk and the hushed sound of the remaining window being drawn shut. He grins.

Oh, Howard Moon has the culprit red handed now, no excuses or stories needed. Even if Bainbridge and his ostentatiously thick and bristling moustache do come barreling through the gates, Howard can point to the criminal element who so carelessly loitered on zoo property and destroyed order in the name of mischief, swiftly apprehended by himself, Howard TJ Moon, only moments after the crime was committed. Just add “Zoo Security,” and perhaps even “First Class Crime Stopping Hero” to his CV.

Howard counts to three, then whirls as fast as he can, being bogged down as he is by honey-roasted to the left and chocolate-covered to the right. He leaps through the waist-deep peanuts like a swift, powerful jungle cat and pounces, wringing a squeak of surprise out of the culprit. 

He hauls the guilty party up from behind the counter of the kiosk and suddenly, it’s not Howard’s brain shouting, it’s just Howard himself shouting “VINCE!” at top volume.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon (for my own fic) is that the mischievous kid was Leroy’s little brother, visiting from school.
> 
> When I was coming up with excuses for Vince, I thought author's rights sounded both vague and authoritative enough to work - something Vince could toss out offhandedly as an excuse that Howard would buy, respecter of rules that he is. When I Googled, I was delighted to find out that authors had something called moral rights, that just happened to fit the story perfectly… thanks, universe!


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chaos arrives in its truest form: Bob Fossil.

Vince’s pink scarf from this morning is tied around his head Rambo-style, and there’s a glittering dust of salt and sugar in his fringe and on the apples of his cheeks, which are pink from exertion. His eyes have gone the size of saucers at being hauled up from his hiding place by Howard. He recovers quickly from the surprise and grins, giving Howard a cheerful “Alright?” as he slides his hands into the pocket of his Zooniverse jacket.

“Thought you’d be wrapping up with Bainbridge about now,” he says as he fidgets in place. 

Howard’s eyes narrow. He's almost certain Vince would be toeing the floor of Naboo’s kiosk with his boot if he could see either the floor or Vince’s boots underneath the layer of peanuts that’s buried the stock inside. 

Howard points at the sugar dust on Vince’s face. “You’ve got a little something there.” 

“Oh, thanks, Howard. It’s the new look: sugar-spun highlighter, straight from the fairgrounds of, uh… Milan. Well fashionable to wear during the harvest festival. Must have went a bit too heavy this mornin’.”

“Right. Too heavy. Do you wear it in your fringe, too?”

Howard puts a little more accusation into his point this time as Vince swipes at his hair and winces slightly as he remembers the scarf. He pulls it back down around his neck, where it hangs askew.

“Isn’t that part of ‘the look,’ too?” 

“Hmm?” Vince hums, fiddling with the fringe of the scarf, blinking up at Howard from under his lashes. He’s swaying his hips slightly. 

“The scarf. Isn’t that part of the look, too?”

“Oh! The most important part,” Vince confirms. “You switch off, see? Around your neck in the mornin’ and then any time again after 4PM. Thanks, Howard, wouldn’t want to be caught messin’ that up already, get banned by the Early Adopters Fashion Council for access to the next trends.”

Vince peers at the monkey face clock on the wall of Naboo’s kiosk and beams at Howard. “Genius! Almost time to knock off for the day. Come on, Howard, _Colobus_ marathon at mine.” 

Vince spins on his heel and makes for the back of the kiosk, which would let him exit the Zooniverse through one of Naboo’s secret doors. It would also allow him to bypass the mess in the courtyard entirely. The mess that Howard is growing more and more suspicious of Vince for having taken part in causing. 

Sugar-spun highlighter? Ridiculous. _Milanese fairground fashion?_ Howard’s heard that one before. More like…. 

_More like a massive food fight between Vince and those kids from the school group_.

Howard darts his arm out and catches Vince by the back of his jacket before he can get any further. And before Howard can question Vince as to what he knows about the entire courtyard being flooded with every flavour and variety of peanut under the sun, a half-empty packet of peanuts sails out of Vince’s jacket pocket.

Vince freezes, then tries to swipe the packet off the counter at the same time that Howard’s hand falls down on top of his own. 

“Uh… d'you want one, Howard?” Vince squeaks, turning pinker and sheepishly offering the packet to Howard. “You know I always get peckish in the afternoons.”

Before Howard can give Vince an icy glare and stomp off to get - bin bags? a gigantic hoover? a flamethrower? He’s not even sure where to begin cleaning this mess up - the pair are interrupted by a delighted bellow coming around the corner. 

“Oh man, what’s happening here? Holy crap on a cream cracker, call the ape squad! It’s a monkey nut parade!”

Howard drops Vince’s hand and moves back as Fossil comes barreling into the courtyard with a gleeful “Whee!” He’s carrying a cardboard box, which he drops on the periphery of the mess before diving into the peanuts like an enthusiastic kid leaping into a ball pit at a fun fair. 

He surfaces with peanuts clinging to his mussed hair and safari suit, and starts up a languid paddle, kicking his legs like a frog as he moves. He pauses to wave at Vince.

“Hey, Vincey! Grab your little blue trunks and come on in, the water’s fine!”

Vince grins with delight and leaps over the counter, but Howard stops him from moving further with a hand on his chest. He shoots Vince an incredulous glare that reminds him he’s supposed to at least pretend to be contrite. 

Vince immediately drops his eyes down to his boots. Before he can start peering up at Howard from under his lashes, Howard sneaks a peek into the box Fossil dropped. Not too soon, as Fossil begins throwing handfuls of peanuts - at himself - and giggling out, “Oh, stop it, you! Don’t splash me! I’m not that kind of girl!”

Howard is relieved to see that the box isn’t full of tiny statues of other zoo animals or (God forbid) more packets of snack food. It’s stacked to the brim with tidy boxes of paperclips instead. The sliver of order in the situation calms Howard briefly.

“Mr. Fossil? Mr. Fossil?” 

Howard wades into the peanuts when it becomes clear that he’s not getting Fossil’s attention in the traditional manner. It's slow going; he's moving like his feet are stuck in tar. 

As he nears, Fossil dives under the peanuts at lightning speed and surfaces by the gates. Howard pauses and approaches him slowly, palms up, like he’s coaxing a scared animal into trusting him. 

“Mr. Fossil? Stay there. I need to talk to you about the zoo inspect-”

Fossil leans his head back and spits peanuts out of his mouth like a deranged legume fountain. He dives again, and when Howard turns around, he’s all the way past the visitor map. 

“ _How are you so good at this?_ ” Howard mutters under his breath. “Mr. Fossil, wait! This is serious!” 

When Fossil hears the s-word, he dives again. Howard waits for him to surface. When he doesn’t come up, Howard groans in frustration and starts walking back towards the kiosk, dragging his feet through the sea of peanuts, trying to flush Fossil out. 

Vince is giggling silently, shoulders shaking from his perch on the kiosk counter. Howard shoots him a look. 

“Come on, help me find him,” Howard says, before he slips and surfaces, coughing and covered in stray peanuts and sugar dust. 

“Alright, alright,” Vince gets out, choking back a laugh. “But I ain't usin’ that technique.”

Howard continues his slow path back to the kiosk, dragging through the peanuts as Vince kicks a few of the outermost nuts towards the path leading away from the courtyard. One at a time, of course. He’s lining them up with the toe of his boot like he’s getting ready to take a game-deciding penalty kick.

When Howard’s made it back, having broken into a full sweat, he straightens up, hands on his hips. Vince is inexplicably giggling at him.

“What’s so funny? This is a serious matter! You know, you’d have a better chance of finding him if you searched in a place where he might actually be hiding. He’s not in these” - Howard gestures at the ten or so nuts Vince has scraped to the side - “unless he figured out how to, I don’t know, shrink down.”

Vince erupts fully into giggles at Howard’s stern tone.

Howard blinks, confused for a moment, and then states flatly, “He’s behind me, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Vince gasps out, hands wrapped around his middle, trying to hold the laughter in as he bends at the waist.

“He’s making faces, isn’t he?”

“ _Uh huh_ ,” Vince returns as he swipes tears of mirth out of his eyes.

Howard nods and takes a deep breath, trying to regain some sense of composure. He tugs at the hem of his jacket and centers himself before turning around.

Fossil immediately drops the mad face he’s pulling and molds his features into an expression of pure, rapturous innocence. Howard takes a step back. It’s somehow a worse expression than the previous one.

“Uh, Mr. Fossil? We need to talk about the zoo inspection and Bainbridge.”

Without breaking eye contact, Fossil picks up his box of paperclips, walking backwards down the pathway. 

“Report to my office, Moon. We need to talk about the zoo inspection.” 

He ducks around the corner, fully out of sight before peeking back to add, “And Bainbridge.” 

Howard grits his teeth in frustration and shouts after him, “I know! I just said that!”

When Howard turns back to face Vince, he’s disappeared. He can only sigh at this point. He must have missed Bainbridge when he was drafting feeding schedules. Bainbridge is probably waiting in Fossil’s office right now. He definitely saw the mess in the courtyard. He’s doomed.

Howard reaches a hand down into the peanuts, fishing around until he hears a familiar squeak. He hauls Vince out by the arm. 

“Come on, let’s get this over with,” he growls, dragging Vince and his big blue eyes behind him before he has any chance of wriggling away again.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why did the Zooniverse close, indeed?

Fossil is whistling a tune to himself as he strings chains of paperclips across his office like a blue-clad spider. There are long strands hung across the doors and windows that clink together in the breeze, and an immense web shimmering from the ceiling. 

Howard immediately gets tangled in the chains. He bats them away while Vince ducks under his flailing arm and walks into Fossil’s office unscathed, weaving expertly through the metallic maze.

Fossil turns from where he’s draping an intricate chain through the pulls of his filing cabinet drawers and sits. He’s bubbling with a level of enthusiasm that neither of them have seen before, and frankly, considering his typically high energy levels, it’s frightening. Howard feels slightly relieved when he realizes Bainbridge and his dense, yet expertly groomed moustache are nowhere in sight.

“Ah, Howard and little Vincey, so glad you could make it. Go ahead and take a seat.” 

Fossil gestures grandly over the front of his desk; there are no chairs other than his own in the office. Vince shoots a look at Howard and he shrugs back, so Vince perches on the one corner of Fossil’s desk that isn’t covered in boxes of paperclips, and Howard remains standing.

Fossil smiles from ear to ear. “I’ve got great news! The zoo inspection for today is canceled!”

Howard breathes a sigh of relief. The future isn’t looking so bleak after all. Maybe he’ll be able to clean up the sea of peanuts before Bainbridge comes for the next inspection, salvage his reputation as a zoo professional, still get a promotion. Win Gideon's heart.

Howard reaches into his jacket for his pocket planner and clicks his trusty pen, ready to record the revised appointment. 

“When was Bainbridge thinking he’d like to schedule the next inspection?”

“The next inspection is also canceled,” Fossil returns cheerily.

Howard lifts a brow. 

“Okay… how about the next… next inspection?”

“Also canceled,” Fossil grins.

Howard feels his patience slipping away as the sun drops lower in the sky and beams directly into his eyes via the swinging paperclip chains adorning Fossil’s window. 

“Alright. Okay. Will there be any zoo inspections now or any time in the near future?” he asks, shielding his eyes.

“None,” Fossil beams.

Howard’s at the end of his rope. He’s fed up with prompting information, and with the thoughts of spending his evening cleaning up the courtyard so the Zooniverse will be ready for the morning crowd, and he’s pretty sure there’s a stray peanut in his boot. And - God, why him - he thinks one might have slipped down into his pants. 

He squirms uncomfortably and blurts out, “Mr. Fossil, why? Where’s Bainbridge? And what is going on around here with all of these paperclips?” 

Howard ducks as a chain falls down from the ceiling, as if it anticipated his animosity. He flicks paperclips off of his shoulders and out of his hair in exasperation.

“Well, Moon, if you’ll let me get a word in edgewise, maybe I can explain.” 

Fossil rolls his eyes in Howard’s direction and shakes his head in exaggerated exasperation before he continues, his voice pinging back to sheer delight.

“The Zooniverse is closing down in two weeks, so you and Vince will be out of a job by the end of the month! And I’m finally redecorating my office the way I always wanted it to look before they turn this place into a parking lot! There were extra paperclips in the elephant enclosure, so go wild and take some for the keeper’s hut. Here, take as many as you want!” 

Fossil scoops up as many boxes as he can hold and leans over the desk to deposit them in Howard’s arms. He’s giggling as he stands on tiptoe to add a few more links to a chain dangling from the ceiling.

Howard lets the boxes fall onto the floor, spilling paperclips in a puddle at his feet. He’s half-aware that Vince has gotten up from the corner of the desk and is hiding behind him, curling his fingers into Howard’s jacket sleeve. 

“What… what did you say, Mr. Fossil?”

“It’s redecorating time! Paperclips for all! Oh, I like your style, Moon,” Fossil says, nodding in the direction of the floor and opening several boxes to dump around his desk chair.

“No, Mr. Fossil, what did you say about the Zooniverse closing?”

“Oh, that,” Fossil says, waving a hand dismissively. “Bainbridge is missing, and his solicitors say we don’t have enough money to stay open, blah, blah, blah, details, details, details. I tuned out after a while… a total snooze-fest, if you catch my drift.”

In case Howard didn’t, Fossil snores loudly, with his eyes open, staring directly at him, before picking back up. 

“We’re moving the animals to other zoos and then I’m leaving on a boat-” Fossil pauses to mimic an airplane taking off before continuing “-to make my way in America! My uncle works in Hollywood, and he's getting me a job in the entertainment business!”

“Mr. Fossil, you’re already from America, you don’t need to ‘make your way’ there,” Howard starts, frustrated. “No, wait, that’s not important. What do you mean, Bainbridge is missing?”

“Yeah, dude, he disappeared. No one’s seen him for three weeks.” 

Fossil dips his voice low and thrusts his face over his desk lamp, like a kid telling scary stories with a flashlight tucked under his chin. 

“Not since the spooky night of Vincey’s party, when the scary pink sugar man came. You know, the sticky man? The one-”

Howard cuts him off. He doesn’t want to hear any more, and he can feel Vince’s grip getting tighter on his jacket sleeve. 

“I know who you mean, Mr. Fossil. Where are all the other keepers? Where’s Mrs. Gideon?”

“Oh, they bounced like fresh watermelons off hot pavement as soon as I told them we were closing. You and Vince are the only ones left.”

Fossil straightens up and jabs a finger at the pair of them. 

“You two better get some sleep, because you’ve got animal transport first thing in the morning.”

With that, Fossil dismisses them by picking up a paperclip chain and spinning around in his desk chair, wrapping himself in paperclips as he shouts, “Whee! Spin me! Spin me faster!”

Howard and Vince exit his office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What else could explain Fossil's absence from S2 right until the end, other than a mysterious family member getting him a job in the US entertainment industry? Fossil as compere to the Pie Face Showcase is fantastic beyond belief, and of course, he ends up running the Velvet Onion in S3, putting all that music biz experience to good use.
> 
> And Charlie is totally responsible for Bainbridge’s disappearance.


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard’s in a panic and there are peanuts that just won’t quit, but he's given good advice given by a tiny, scowling shaman.

Howard opens the door to the keeper’s hut and fumbles for the lightswitch. Vince hasn’t made a peep since the shocker of Fossil’s announcement, his eyes downcast on the pathway the entire way back to the hut. He brushes past on wobbly legs to sit on the sofa. The way he slumps down into himself on the cushions makes him look tiny and fragile, like a discarded rag doll.

A spike of fear in the pit of Howard’s stomach temporarily roots him to the center of the keeper’s hut floor, thoughts cycling through his head. He feels like he did the last time he stepped too close to the edge of the pool before the Porpoise Derby, struggled to catch his balance, and fell straight into the unexpectedly cold water. He feels like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces have been laid out right side up, ready to be slotted into place, only to be swept back into the box and shaken up vigorously. He feels  _ awful _ , in short.

This afternoon, everything was moving into place for him. He was head keeper of a moderately successful zoo. As long as he kept up with his duties, he had a bright future ahead of him, perhaps even a chance at a storybook romance with the object of his deepest desires. Now, he’s left with cleaning up the odds and ends of the Zooniverse, and then, he’s out of a job.

Howard feels his body unfreeze even as his brain starts to panic. He’s dumbstruck and overwhelmed at the same time. 

Before he realizes it, he’s out the door of the keeper’s hut. It rattles on its hinges as he presses his back against the wood, breathing the fresh air in deeply as he tries to quell his pounding pulse. 

He pushes his feet into the soles of his boots as hard as he can, trying to ground himself. _Rehome all the animals in two weeks and close up the entire zoo?_ _With no help from the other keepers?_ It’s an impossible task. It’s ridiculous. He can’t even begin to consider what he’ll do and where he’ll go once the Zooniverse is closed for good.

He shifts impatiently on his feet, feeling the peanut in his boot jab into his heel. “Alright,” he says, trying to calm down, hands clenched into fists at his side as he shakes his foot to dislodge it. 

Oh, that’s right… what a lovely reminder. Before he singlehandedly closes up the entire zoo and his promising future goes into the bin for good, he has a whole ocean of monkey nuts to clean up. That’s just great. Wonderful. Magical.

Howard grits his teeth and feels the peanut shift even deeper into his heel, burrowing like an enterprising piece of Lego. “Alright, then. That’s it,” he breathes out, exasperated, leaning down to yank the boot off of his foot. 

He nearly falls over taking it off, and feeling a prickle of rage dancing around the back of his neck, he stands up rapidly and pitches the boot as hard as he can down the path.

He’s met with the boot flying back at him at top speed, thumping into his solar plexus. It’s followed by an indignant lisp.

“Oi! What d’you think you’re playin’ at, you ballbag?”

Howard grimaces, fingers clenching around his boot. He’s in for it now.

Naboo floats into his vision, a scowl on his face. The tiny shaman is quite literally  _ floating,  _ hovering above the path with his hands tucked behind his back. His turban is slightly askew, and as he eyes Howard, looking him up and down with a disgruntled expression, it magically rights itself atop his head.

“Uhhh… sorry, Naboo.” Howard uses the most convincing placating tone he can muster under the circumstances. “Didn’t see you there.” He goes for a grin, but it comes out as a grimace, stretching across his face like a tight, uncomfortable mask. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

Naboo scowls back at him. “I work here? Like you, you plonker?”

“No, uh… oh, yes! Yes, I know,” Howard blurts out. “That’s, uh, not what I meant. I meant, Fossil told me the Zooniverse is closing. Everyone else quit.”

“Yeah, they did.” Naboo rolls his eyes. “I can't. I’m under contract.” 

He takes a hand from behind his back and snaps his fingers while staring at them intently. Nothing happens.

Howard waits a beat, then gestures toward Naboo’s hand. “Is something supposed to… ?”

Naboo darts a frustrated glance at Howard, brow furrowed. “Hang on. I’ve got cramp.”

He wiggles his fingers before reaching into the folds of his robe to withdraw a scroll, unfurling it with a flick of his wrist. It’s ancient, lettered with tiny print in a variety of languages and symbols Howard doesn’t understand. It’s seemingly endless: the paper is already stretched down the path and rolling off toward the horizon. 

Naboo starts scanning each section, tossing the scroll over his shoulder as he searches. 

“Kiosk health and safety guidelines… familiar selection rules… directions to the Fountain… shopowner’s property rights… ancient mystic secrets…. ‘s never where you remember it,” he murmurs as he parses through the scroll. 

The paper thrown over his shoulder is piled past his turban now, dwarfing his diminutive form, even floating several inches above the ground as he is. He stops, wrinkling his nose in mild annoyance as he taps at a bit written in emerald green ink. 

“Ahh, missed out on free admission to EuroDisney. That’s 108 euros down the drain! 'S about right; I really wanted to see Fantasyland.”

The next section, inked onto the ancient scroll in large, flourishing letters, is an agreement between Bainbridge, Fossil, and Naboo, obligating Naboo to remain under contract as resident kiosk shaman at the Zooniverse until it ceases to exist. The language is airtight. Howard raises a brow. 

“Naboo, that’s a strong agreement for someone of your talents and abilities to have signed.”

Naboo shrugs, and Howard shoots a hand out, feeling suddenly woozy. A cold breeze rattles through the leaves on the bushes along the path out of nowhere, shifting up several notches to a frigid wind. He shivers, feeling icy fingers dart along his spine underneath the material of his shirt and uniform jacket.

Naboo’s voice is supernaturally loud when he speaks, although his lips don’t move. It sounds like he’s coming from inside the deepest, echoing recesses of Howard’s brain, bouncing off the walls of his skull.

_ “Sometimes s’not about ability. S’about being where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there.”  _

The cold wind scales back down to a breeze and then dies entirely. Howard has his eyes squeezed shut. He feels his body lurching forward and braces himself for impact, feeling like he’s going to fall. When he peeks one eye open, he’s standing in the exact same position he was before, clutching his boot. 

Unsurprisingly, Naboo isn’t ruffled a bit. He snaps his fingers and the scroll retracts as if spring-loaded, coiling neatly into his hand.

This is all too much. There are too many things pressing in at Howard from all directions. His brain is screaming at him to drop his boot and flee as fast as he can in any direction. Scale the walls, burrow underground, anything to get away. It’s too much to deal with, Naboo’s slightly annoyed stare combined with whatever the hell  _ that _ just was, and that other peanut is still in his pants and-

“Well, Naboo, I’m glad you’re still here, but I’ve got to, um… go. Head keeper duties call, you know.” Howard chuckles nervously. “I have to… uhh…”

_ Clean up the mess in the courtyard, _ Howard’s brain hints.

“... clean up the mess in the courtyard!” Howard blurts. 

Perhaps it’s a little too emphatic, as Naboo floats a step backward, then stares at him questioningly.

“Don’t worry about that, s’been taken care of. Enchanted the hoover to do the kiosk carpets, put my feet up for a bit. Sent it outside after.”

“Oh. Um, cheers, Naboo. Really, thanks a lot. You’ve saved me so much time, I’ll be able to-” _Shit. Think of something foolproof this time._ “… start night watch early?” he finishes, his voice rising as he holds back a grimace.

Naboo raises an eyebrow, then dips his head to the horizon. “A little early to start night watch when the sun’s still out,” he states flatly. 

He’s not buying any of Howard’s excuses, then.

Howard can feel himself start to sweat. “I can do… uh… prep and planning?” He cringes as soon as he finishes speaking. 

_ Prep and planning? What does that even mean? Prepare for the sun to go down? Plan to make the same rounds he does every night? _

“Right.” Naboo eyes him. “Don’t worry about night watch either. S’already taken care of. Do your last round and then you’re on animal transport in the morning... you  _ and _ Vince, yeah?” he says pointedly, emphasizing Vince’s name with a raised brow as he starts to float away back down the path toward the courtyard.

_ Oh, shit. _

_ Vince. _

In his haste and panic to escape, Howard has completely forgotten about Vince. He's by himself in the keeper's hut, where Howard left him, alone and upset. 

Howard feels the spike of fear from earlier spread and settle in the pit of his stomach. He’s failed as a keeper, and he’s failed as a friend. He doesn’t deserve the title of man of action. 

Naboo doesn’t turn, but Howard can swear he hears a quiet echo of his voice from earlier. 

_ “S’about being where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there.” _

Howard forces his panic and fear down, takes a deep breath, and turns toward the hut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first time writing Naboolio, and I couldn't help but bring out his sulky and sarcastic tendencies. He has some v. interesting items on his scroll: directions to the Fountain of Youth, shopowner's property rights… and aw man, he might’ve missed out on Fantasyland in this universe, but maybe he knows a Fantasy Man in another. ;)


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some Zoo Times sad boy hours followed by banter and fluffy toast times

The inside of the keeper’s hut is quiet and shadowy as the sun drops over the Zooniverse. Vince hasn't moved from his place on the sofa. The silent stillness is unnerving to Howard; typically, Vince can’t sit in one place for more than a minute, fidgeting all over and chatting nonsense and inching closer into Howard’s space until they’re pressed together elbow to wrist, hip to knee. 

“Vince?” 

Howard walks tentatively toward him, hands spread out wide like he’s approaching a cornered animal. 

“Sorry about that. I had something to take care of outside. Vince, are you alright?” 

Vince raises his head. His eyes are dazed, and he’s not making any move to wipe his tears away, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. A tear slides down the tip of his nose and falls onto the material of his tailored trousers.

Howard crosses the short distance to sit down next to Vince, mentally preparing to break his “don’t touch me” rule. He’s planning to stop the flood of tears with a foolproof move: a longer-than-usual pat on the back. Once Vince has made a speedy recovery, maybe he'll even throw in a friendly punch to the arm to finish up.

Before he’s halfway seated, Vince is on him like a puma, burying his face in the front of Howard’s jacket. His hot, angry tears soak through the fabric unnervingly quickly.

Howard freezes. Okay. Okay… if there’s any situation that merits repealing the “don’t touch me” rule in full, it’s this one.

Even so, it doesn’t make all the touching any easier for Howard to deal with. He blurts out the first thing he can come up with, hoping that will be enough to soothe Vince’s distress.

“Uhh… hey, little man. Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay. You’re okay.” 

At this, Vince sobs harder, his grip around Howard’s ribs tightening. __

_ Words aren’t helping, then. Not words, definitely not words. _

Howard panics. He’s run out of options; he’s far, far away from his comfort zone in a safe, soothing, pat-on-the-back range. His hands are fluttering nervously in the air and before he knows what he’s doing, they come to rest on top of Vince’s head. He pats at Vince’s hair awkwardly, wincing as he waits for the inevitable increase in upset.

Vince burrows closer to him, breath hot on his neck, his sobs dissolving into sniffles. There goes the “don’t ever touch me” rule in concert with the “don’t touch my hair” rule, then. 

Howard pats at his hair enthusiastically as Vince cries himself out. When Vince hiccups in a breath and speaks, his voice is small and wavering.

“Howard, why?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, and huffs out the rest with his face buried in Howard’s neck, one long string of thorny, tangled words.

“What are the animals gonna do without me? I’m the only one who c’n talk to them. I’m the only keeper who’s ever listened to their problems. No one knows how the lemurs like to be groomed when they start to get split ends, an’ no one else can tell the chameleons apart when they start impersonatin’ one another. No one knows how Mr. Bollo likes his bananas cut at a special angle.” 

Vince pulls back, chopping at the air with the flat of his hand to demonstrate, and Howard’s heart sinks at the pained expression on his tearstained face.

“Howard,” he chokes out thickly, “I’m not even gonna get to say a proper goodbye.” 

Howard’s brain starts screaming “doom!” and "despair!" and “run as fast as you can!” again. He takes a deep breath and repeals his “no direct eye contact” rule, shoving those unhelpful thoughts aside. Again, he blurts the first thing that comes to mind. He sounds so convincing as he speaks that he begins to believe what he’s saying.

“Hey, Vince, we have time. Look, we have two weeks until we close. That’s plenty of time to rehome the animals. Didn’t you just tell me last week that the swans were thinking about moving back to Hampstead Heath?”

Vince sniffles, pulling his sleeves over his hands and hitching in a breath. 

“Well… yeah. Kurt ‘n’ Tommy’re getting well sick of bein’ cooped up here. Their old pond was massive.”

“See? Jack Cooper has friends all over the countryside, and in the London clubs. Mrs. Gideon lent us the reptiles in the Reptile House. And other zoos are always after our pandas. Don’t you remember the increased bear monitoring schedule I implemented during night watch last year after I spotted those suspicious characters lurking around the panda enclosure?”

Vince swipes at his eyes with his sleeve. There’s the hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. 

"Yeah, I remember, Howard. It was a bunch of kids in panda masks from Naboo’s kiosk.”

“There’s no way that one was a kid!" Howard sputters. "He was at least six feet tall, and he practically had a beard! In a Year 7 school group? I don’t think so, sir. He was clearly an impostor, or… or a plant. A spy from London Zoo, sent to scope us out.”

“You were nearly six feet tall with a beard when you were a Year 7, Howard.”

“... that’s beside the point.”

“Alright,” Vince replies, a grin poking at the corners of his mouth. “But what about all the special enrichment, an’ the grooming schedules? An’ the bush babies, Howard! The little ones like a cuddle-”

“-and a story before bedtime, I know.” 

Howard pats his jacket and tries not to wince when he feels that his pocket planner has gone a little damp with Vince’s tears. He brandishes the book, giving it a pause for due reverence before continuing.

“Documentation is my specialty, Vince. In this book is a vast repository of zoo knowledge, painstakingly crafted from notes and lectures and hands-on experience, sectioned off into chapters and thoroughly footnoted with likes, dislikes, quirks, and special remarks. Leroy can do us up some copies at the copy centre to accompany the animals to their new abodes. Maybe laminated covers, spiral bound. Twelve, twelve-and-a-half point font for easy reading. Sans serif, of course.”

Vince flops back into the sofa, overcome with mock horror. “Laminated covers? Ugh, Howard, stop it. That is well uncool.” 

He attempts to interrupt his grin with a grimace; it’s an odd sight, and Howard can’t help but smile back at his delighted goblin expression.

Vince’s hands come up to cover his face when he can’t hide his grin. He scrubs at the tear tracks that have dried on his cheeks. A muffled, “Howard, get us a wet flannel?” drifts out from behind his jacket sleeves. Once Howard is at the sink, it’s followed in short order by a, “Howard? S’long ‘s you’re up, can you make us a cup of tea?”

Howard shakes his head at the cheek as he tosses the flannel to Vince, but he turns back to fill the kettle and grab mugs and teabags out of the cabinet all the same. Vince leans his head back onto the sofa, the flannel draped over his face.

“Howard? Is there any bread left for toast?”

“One slice or two?” Howard returns, already counting four slices of bread out of the bag with his fingers. Two for him, two for Vince. 

Howard _ might _ have had a few spare pages at the back of his pocket planner once he’d delegated space for the animal occupants of the Zooniverse. Those spare pages  _ might _ be full of likes, dislikes, quirks and special remarks, including the typical toast preferences of his fellow keepers. Well. One fellow keeper in particular. Howard’s not one to let spare pages go unused, after all. No other reasons, no sir. Howard's just documenting things as he sees them.

“Two, please,” Vince responds. “And Howard? Could you-?”

“Buttered and cut into triangles, marmalade on the side, raspberry jam on standby?”

“Thanks, Howard,” Vince breathes out. “You’re a diamond.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are the two swans moving back to Hampstead Heath inspired by the same two gay swans who were obviously in love from [this](https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/67598943/mighty-boosh-star-noel-fielding-explains-himself) interview? Maybe. Did the "TJ" in Howard TJ Moon and the "K" in Vince K. Noir have anything to do with their names being Tommy and Kurt? Maybeeeee... sure would be beautiful.
> 
> What could a fox like Jack Cooper do in the clubs of London? That's up to you to decide, dear reader.


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naboo has a poke around the Zooniverse and sets his plans in motion.

The full moon illuminates the Zooniverse as Naboo floats down the pathway from his kiosk to begin night watch. It’s a doddle for him; it would take him longer to sneeze than it would for him to block any late night trespassers from entering zoo grounds and zap extra food and water to the animals using his shaman powers. While he’s thinking about it, he blinks once, and every lock and latch fall into place; twice, and bowls of diced meat, fruit, and water appear in their correct places in each enclosure. 

Night watch taken care of, Naboo is free to focus on the two more pressing reasons he wanted the zoo to himself tonight.

He peers into Fossil’s office as he passes. He's asleep, slumped in his desk chair but held securely by looping chains of paperclips. “Yeah, that’s right, give me all the Blu-Tack,” he’s murmuring, stretching his hand out over his desk as he dreams. “No, not there… not there… yeah, that’s it. A little to the left,” he says, gesturing to the right. 

Naboo rolls his eyes. The lights are on in the office, so he raises a brow at the lightswitch, and it obediently flicks itself down.

He nods, and as he brushes past the window, he reaches his hand back. A clipboard levitates off the sill and slips into his outstretched palm. He scans the animal transport schedule that Fossil’s outlined for the next two weeks. The largest animals - the pandas, the tigers, the lion - are first on the list to be rehomed, followed by the koalas, the bush babies, and the otters. The birds are next, and the list finishes with the fish from the aquarium and the reptiles.

Naboo considers his plans, and shakes his head. That won’t do.

He drifts to the Reptile House. The doors unlock and open as he glides inside. He pulls a silver fountain pen from the inside pocket of his robes, and the clipboard shuffles a fresh sheet of paper to the top of the stack. Barely moving his wrist, he notes down the lizards and snakes that are on loan from Mrs. Gideon, and a swooping script appears on the paper below.

He does the same at the Chameleon Boudoir, giving the tiny pranksters a strict talking-to when they try to blend in to his robes to hide from his headcount. He rolls his eyes when he feels one climb onto his hand in an attempt to mimic the gleaming silver of his pen. 

“Yeah, nice one, Teddy. Very subtle,” he drawls, plucking the creature off and setting him back down in the lineup.

Naboo tours the rest of the Zooniverse, jotting down notes: other zoos that he knows would be interested in the lemurs, the names of shaman contacts who could host a leopard or two, the coordinates of the pond on Hampstead Heath that the swans will be flying back to in the morning. By the time Naboo loops through the aquarium, he’s filled several sheets with swirling script.

He flips back to Fossil’s animal transport list and rereads it, the light from the turquoise water sending shimmering ripples across the page. No, it definitely won’t do. 

Naboo gives the list one last fleeting look before setting the clipboard down on the bench in front of him. The ink begins to waver on the page, then melts, letters slowly reforming into a new order.

Phase one of his plan is nearing completion. Phase two isn’t shaping up the way he hoped; he’s inspected nearly every animal, and he’s come up short.

Naboo absently flicks his glance toward the waving fins of the tropical fish in the massive tank, moving his hands apart to clear them to either side, leaving an empty space in the middle. One by one, he moves each fish to the center, giving them a good once-over. 

When he’s scanned through the majority, he shakes his head and picks the clipboard back up, letting the fish cascade gently back to their original places. He should have known better; they’re too flashy and impractical for what he has in mind. He needs something more solid. More powerful. Preferably something that can breathe and walk on land.

Naboo floats back in the direction of Fossil’s office, giving the clipboard a gentle toss in the direction of the window. It sails to the sill as if magnetized, and lands with a gentle clack. There’s phase one, then.

As Naboo glides back toward his kiosk, he almost forgets the area of cages closest to the keeper’s hut. Quite a few are empty. He catches a flash of Jack Cooper’s golden eyes, spooky in the moonlight, before the fox turns and heads back to his burrow. 

He almost calls the fox back out, but reconsiders, huffing out a sigh. What with the… erm…  _ personality clash _ between Jack and Howard, it would never work out.

Naboo comes to a stop in front of the last cage in the cluster and peers in through the bars. He can hear snoring and rustling as the animal inside shifts in its sleep in a bed of straw. He squints in the darkness and glances up at the sky, slightly annoyed. “D’you mind?” he calls up, gesturing at the cage.

“Oh, sorry,” the Moon calls down in his softly accented voice. He rotates towards Naboo, illuminating the cage with a bright flood of light as he beams out a lunatic grin. The animal inside squints as the sudden brightness wakes him.

Naboo considers the display in front of him, his face as unmoving and unreadable as a statue’s. Solid. Powerful. Can breathe and walk on land. No rumors that he and Howard had a falling out after a massive bumming session. Slowly, a smile starts to spread across his tiny face, crinkling at the corners of his eyes as he nods. He reaches into his robes for his scroll, seeking a clear patch to draft an agreement of his own.

Mr. Bollo grunts in muddled disorientation, the banana peel that’s made its way onto the top of his head during his sleep sliding down over one eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because the Moon is always full during S2 and S3 of the Boosh, couldn’t help but let him have his first appearance in S1. Also couldn’t help but build the mythology of how Bollo dropped the "mister" from the radio series, and became Naboo’s familiar.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the first transport, and big, scary changes are in motion for both the boys.

Howard grabs the clipboard from the windowsill on Fossil’s office and reaches in to snag the keys to the transport van off the peg in the corner. 

Fossil is nowhere to be seen or heard. Yesterday’s paperclip chains sit in a dejected pile, looped limply around the base of his office chair. There are a few stray chains dangling lonely and askew from the doorframe too, but the rest are gone. Howard walks quickly toward the courtyard before Fossil returns with enough Pritt Stick to cause a riot.

As he flips through the animal transport list, he’s pleased to find that the fish are first up for transport, to an address in an area north of the Zooniverse. Easy enough to begin with - scoop them up, put them in their transport containers in the van, and be back by lunch to see the swans off to the Heath. 

As Howard reaches the courtyard, Naboo is pacing in front of his kiosk, chatting heatedly on his flip phone. 

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I know you’re desperate. I’ll see what can be done, but no promises, alright?” he says, signing off the call and snapping the phone shut.

“Hey, Naboo. Who was that?” Howard asks absentmindedly.

Naboo shrugs. “My mate Barry, looking for a new familiar. He goes through them like Vince goes through Milkybars. Always wants an upgrade to the latest model. ‘You work in a zoo, Naboo, find me something flashy but compact,’ he says. As if it’s that simple.”

“Hmm, yeah. Right,” Howard hums in response, half-listening. He’s too wrapped up in Fossil’s list to give Naboo his full attention. 

The schedule seems surprisingly… well organized? The transport orders make sense, and the level of detail that Fossil has included is welcome, but shocking. Howard wonders if his advice and head keeper’s expertise has finally rubbed off on Fossil. Of course it would happen right as the Zooniverse was closing.

Howard is pleased to see that the animals on the final transports are going to several celebrated zoos and sanctuaries that are practically spa resorts for four-legged creatures. He wonders how Fossil could have managed these placements on such short notice. Mostly, he feels an overwhelming sense of relief knowing that many of the animals that Vince is closest to will be rehomed in good locations.

Naboo interrupts Howard’s thoughts with a pointed glare that Howard can feel piercing through the clipboard. 

“If you’re not too busy, I was saying.…” Naboo trails off, scowling at Howard. “The transport containers are in the aquarium, yeah? When you get to the address, knock four times and tell them Naboo sent you-”

Before Naboo can continue, they’re interrupted by Vince pounding down the path towards them. His cowboy hat is at a funny angle, and his breath is coming in short gasps. 

“Howard!” he squeaks, grabbing onto the sleeve of his jacket, words tumbling out rapidly. “Howard, it’s Mr. Bollo, ‘e’s gone missing! I went to give him his breakfast, but ‘e’s not in his cage. ‘E’s not anywhere! I looked all over! Where’s ‘e gone, Howard?”

Howard’s eyes shoot to the animal transport list, rapidly scanning over the schedule to confirm his first thought: Mr. Bollo isn’t anywhere on the list. Howard opens his mouth to reassure Vince, to let him know that Mr. Bollo couldn’t have gotten far at his advanced age, just as the ape stumbles around the corner.

Mr. Bollo is walking a little faster than usual. Yes, he’s still lumbering, but it’s a sprightly kind of lumber. He’s carrying a cardboard box, followed by Fossil, who has a slightly smaller box of his own and a grin of sheer delight spread across his face. 

_ Oh, God, what now _ , Howard thinks.

Vince turns to look behind him when he sees the expression on Howard’s face change. He leaps at Mr. Bollo, squeezing his arms around the ape’s neck in relief, knocking his own hat to the ground in his enthusiasm.

“Mr. Bollo! I thought you’d already gone!” he says, as the ape pats at his back with a massive paw.

“It just Bollo now,” he responds, shifting the cardboard box to his hip as a pad of sticky notes falls out onto the path. 

Fossil ducks down and tosses them back into the box, humming joyfully to himself and pirouetting ahead in the direction of his office, lifting his cardboard box reverently over his head like they’re partners in an intricate dance. He swings the box around and then stops to waggle his fingers, beckoning to Bollo.

Bollo sighs. “I gotta bad feeling about dis. Bollo see precious Vince later.” He pats Vince on the shoulder before following after Fossil.

Howard and Vince exchange a thoroughly confused glance, then turn to Naboo. He’s seemingly nonplussed by the entire exchange, leaning up against the wall of his kiosk as he taps out a message on his flip phone. He makes a sound of disgust as he thumbs at the keyboard. 

“The 6 is sticking again. Useless.”

“Naboo?” Howard ventures. “Could you perhaps…  _ enlighten _ Vince and I as to what exactly is going on around here?”

Naboo quirks his brow, looking up from his phone with an expression that clearly says, “What? ‘S not apparent?”

“What’s happened to Mr…. uh, what’s happened to Bollo?” Vince asks.

Naboo grins. “Oh, right. Thought it was time to take on a familiar, start training him up. Knocked 60-odd years off his age in exchange to sweeten the deal. ‘E’s looking after Fossil today. Sticky notes should get him into less trouble than paperclips.”

“Cool,” Vince nods, an admiring grin on his face. From the faraway look in his eyes, Howard can tell he’s already dreaming up future schemes involving Bollo, mischief, and monkey business. A courtyard full of peanuts is mere child’s play-

A text chimes through to Naboo’s phone, and he flips it open immediately. 

“Go start the transport, yeah? You’re already running late and I need you back by lunch.”

He waves Howard and Vince off with one hand as he starts tapping at his keys with the other.

“Remember, back by noon. The otters won’t feed themselves,” he calls after them.

*

The tropical fish transfer starts as smoothly as Howard could have hoped, even if certain aspects are a little… bizarre. There are enough transport containers for the fish, they all fit in the back of the van, and the directions to the location are easy to follow. 

The location itself is a bit strange. The surrounding buildings and streets are as quiet and blank as a ghost town.

After he and Vince search around for a few minutes, Howard finds the outline of a door in the dead quiet alley of a brick building when he leans on the wall and feels the hard poke of a doorknob in the small of his back.

He knocks four times and politely tells the voice on the other side that he was sent by Naboo. He steps back a pace when the door opens up onto a loud, flashy discotheque pulsing with music. A woman with green skin, flowing robes, and kind features welcomes them to her club, and points them in the direction of two glowing floor to ceiling fishtanks that bookend the bar.

"Vince, you can start bringing in the angelfish and the tetras," Howard calls over the music. He looks to his right, expecting to see Vince standing next to him, like always. He's not there.

He’s wandered off to the balcony, his stomach pressed into the gold railing as he stretches, staring wide-eyed at the dance floor.

There’s a sea of colorful and wildly dressed revelers packed into the small space, wearing every type of fashion trend from the past half-century, as well as some that haven’t even been invented yet, as far as Howard's concerned. Platform boots, glitter, sequins, fringe, studs, leather, spandex, feathers, stripes….

The variety of gleaming fabrics and textures cascading around the lithe flesh on display makes Howard’s head spin until he spots a flash of color at the periphery of the dance floor. He puzzles over the shade as it winks in the disco light. A soft fawn, perhaps, or a gentle hardwood. Bronzed cinnamon. Tepid walnut. Gilded chocolate. Opulent -

Howard snaps out of his sudden reverie as Vince elbows him, gaping at the crowd below them. Vince’s expression hits him like a magically propelled boot to the torso. He’s surprised the revelers below don’t sense the emotion radiating off of him and stop in their stylishly flailing tracks.

It’s a look Howard hasn’t seen since he'd casually clapped an arm around Vince’s shoulders and proposed that he join Howard working at the zoo. "Only if you'd like to. You know, since you can talk to animals and all," he'd said, as nonchalant as he could muster, trying not to let Vince know he'd only taken the job in the first place hoping Vince would find it interesting enough to join him. 

It terrifies Howard; it’s a look that predicts more change.

“Howard, are you seein’ this? This is… this is…  _ genius _ !” 

Vince is practically vibrating out of his skin as he turns and his hand meets Howard’s on the railing.

Howard feels the pit of his stomach begin to flood with panic. He can’t process anything more today. All he wants to do is deliver the fish, drop their care instructions with the kind green woman, and head back to the Zooniverse.

He immediately straightens up, pulls at the hem of his jacket, and pushes what he’s feeling down as far as it can go. He grabs at Vince’s wrist to peek at his watch.

“Come on, we’re behind schedule already. No use lingering.”

Vince looks back wide-eyed over his shoulder as Howard tugs him toward the club exit and the van and the fish and the fresh air outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naboo is so sulky because he's the responsible adult in the fic… sorry, Naboo, but someone's gotta take control and clean this mess up, and it should definitely be the one with helpful magical powers, shaman contacts, and an eye roll that could wilt a redwood at a thousand paces.
> 
> A tiny appearance from Barry, always looking for the latest familiar upgrade he can get.
> 
> Diane’s sideline when she’s not sitting with her fellow shaman could definitely be a secret discotheque owner.
> 
> A couple of awakenings for both the boys: Howard's fascination with the color brown and its wide-ranging classifications, and Vince's fascination with crazy delightful fashion.


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Howard Moon philosophy on emotions: why express when you can repress? And the Vince Noir school? Strop off. Uh oh… time for a fight.

The first week of transports and cleaning and feeding and fixing and problem solving goes by in the blink of an eye. At the close of the week, a little over half of the Zooniverse population has been rehomed, all according to schedule. Jack Cooper scampered back to his friends in London, the swans sent a postcard after settling in at the Heath, and the lemurs and koalas are firmly installed in their newer and larger digs in one of London’s finest petting zoos.

The zoo is certainly quieter without the koalas causing their fluffy brand of chaos, Howard thinks as he sweeps the Koala Palace clean for the final time and latches the gilded entrance gate securely. Howard is exhausted, but clinging to the number of duties he’s taken on. Every care schedule he drafts, every cage he cleans, and every bucket of seed he distributes lets him dodge the cold, looming fingers of reality curling around his ankles, tugging at his trouser legs, creeping upwards to his brain. 

But he’s not going to think about that, no sir. Not when he has a glimmer of hope to hang onto, shining pale and smooth like a jar of fresh cream.

Howard checks his watch and then starts back toward the Reptile House, straightening his shoulders and smoothing his hair into place. He’s due to meet Mrs. Gideon at 4 so she can pick up the reptiles she’s loaned out. Today is truly the day that Howard Moon begins a new chapter in the epic tale of his life.

While Howard finished the quick cleanup of the Koala Palace, he’d asked Vince to get the reptile transport crates out of storage for Gideon and dust them off, shine them up a bit, so they’d be sparkling and ready to go. 

Vince. __

_ Vince in the club, watching the revelers. Vince, with the disco ball light twinkling across his cheeks and brow, eyes wide as his hand touches Howard’s. Vince, the delighted swell of his chest, the look on his face- _

Oh, no. No way. He’s not going to think about that, sir. He’s going to focus on the next task at hand, and at performing his head keeper duties more faithfully than a captain going down with his sinking ship, sir. Loyalty, chivalry, responsibility: these are the keynotes to the Howard Moon, man of action philosophy. Sir.

A philosophy, he thinks, when applied correctly, proves irresistible to the female population. Oh, yes indeed. This is his final chance, his best shot, to show Gideon that he’s everything she’s been dreaming of. Well. Maybe everything she doesn’t consciously  _ know _ she’s been dreaming of, but will certainly realize she’s been missing after this afternoon.

He’s sure to catch her attention and intrigue when she sees how capably he’s handled the zoo closing in the week since she’s been gone. A helping hand here, a “milady” there, and Howard knows that tonight will be the night he escorts Gideon through the Zooniverse gates in a swoon.

Howard rounds the corner, prepared to first escort Mrs. Gideon into the Reptile House with the utmost care and grace due to a fine lady of her standing. She’s waiting in the courtyard, an image of perfection, resplendent in her pose.

Her spine is straight as a rod and her arms are… actually crossed quite angrily, Howard realizes at about the same time he sees that the doors to the Reptile House are locked, and Vince and the transport containers are nowhere to be found.

Howard ducks back around the corner before Gideon can spot him. He’s trapped; there’s no way for him to make it across the courtyard to investigate where Vince is with the transport containers without being seen. 

No point in prolonging his agony, then. He’ll have to salvage the situation as best he can, think on his feet like a real man of action.

“Mrs. Gideon, hi there! Aren’t you looking lovely today?” he begins, a grin plastered on his face as he cheerily strides over. Gideon turns to assess him and takes a step back.

“Who are you?”

Howard’s grin wavers, but he recovers. Not to worry, Gideon's confusion is simply a microscopic bump on the road of their great love story; a funny anecdote to tell their grandkids one day. Howard cocks his finger at her and turns up the intensity of his grin.

“Ha! Very funny! Very funny little bit of banter there. I've always said you have a great understanding of humor!”

Gideon stares back at him, and Howard feels his spirits falter. He spreads his hands out wide. 

“It’s me? Howard Moon, head keeper? Porpoise jockey? We bonded over our shared love of deep, emotional poetry? Uh… we  _ could _ bond over our shared love of deep, emotional poetry, that is, if you’d like to join me tonight. I’ve booked a table for two at Le Champignon Sauvage, and I’ve prepared an epic poem about our history and common interests for their open mic night-”

“I have never seen you before in my life,” Gideon states firmly. “Now, if you could please find someone to unlock the doors, I am here for my pythons.”

Howard hesitates for a moment, trying to come up with something, anything to make her remember. Trumpets? Bookmarks? Russian literature? The first sentence of his novel, the one Hamilton Cork read and loved at Vince’s party? Well… perhaps not that particular memory. Definitely not what happened after that.

Gideon brightens, and Howard’s heart leaps hopefully in his chest.

_ She’s remembered! Howard Moon, man of action, has come dashing through the doors of her memory! _

“Maybe you could tell me where to find that nice boy, Vince,” she says, peering around Howard as if she could make Vince appear behind him through sheer force of thought alone. “He could help me instead.”

Oh.

Howard deflates. He doesn’t press the point any further. He reaches into his jacket pocket for the keys and mechanically unlocks the doors, slumping down to sit on the bench outside.

This is just another task he has to cross off his list, he tells himself, before he finds out exactly where Vince, nice boy that he is, has gotten off to.

*

Howard marches to the keeper’s hut, arms swinging at his sides. The Reptile House is empty, Gideon having taken the last of the creatures and Howard’s dreams of a powerful romance along with her. He shoves his hands in his pockets roughly enough to feel his knuckles burst through the well-worn seams.

Great. Just great. Another thing to add to the tally of annoyances snapping at Howard like a matador’s cape in the breeze. He pushes the hut door open and puts an extra measure of upper body strength into giving it a hearty slam shut. It feels satisfying for about half a second, until he realizes he’s caught his belt loop on the latch, yanking himself directly into the door.

Vince looks up with a start from the corner of the hut, where he’s hunched over the small table the typewriter is perched on. Was perched on, Howard notes. The typewriter sits askew on the floor next to a battered notebook full of Vince’s doodles and piled bolts of fabric. It’s been replaced in its position of power by a clacking sewing machine, all cool white and chrome underneath the colorful stickers haphazardly dotted over its surface.

“Alright, Howard?” he says, pressing the tip of his cowboy boot back down on the foot pedal as Howard disentangles himself from the door. He’s feeding a softly shining material through the machine, tongue pressed firmly in the corner of his mouth as he concentrates on avoiding any bunches in the fabric. He gets to the end of the - shirt? trousers? Howard’s not sure - and methodically backtracks to finish his hem, snipping the thread and holding his work up to inspect the stitching.

Howard is not alright. He’s not fine, either, and he’s most assuredly nowhere near the right side of okay. Each little annoyance has jabbed a pick in the lock to the door he’s sealed tight over every thought he’s tried not to think and every emotion he’s shoved down since 4:30PM last Tuesday. And it’s wiggled, and wiggled, and wiggled, until the lock dropped open with a sharp click that sounded quite like the hut door slamming and taking Howard along with it.

Vince flourishes his trousers? …shirt?…  _ trousershirt _ at Howard, shaking imaginary wrinkles loose from the silvery fabric before clutching it against his chest. 

“Howard, look! Not bad for a first go, right?” he says, throwing a miniature shape, framing his face with his hands before clapping them back to his chest as the material begins to fall.

“Just wait til they see Vince Noir, rock ‘n’ roll star, shined up in this little number. Won’t know what’s hit ‘em.” Vince pauses, plucking at the trousershirt sleeve. “This seam’s gone a bit funny, though.” 

He turns back to sit at the sewing machine, rifling through the thimbles and spools of thread strewn over the table before finding a seam ripper. His tongue’s back in the corner of his mouth in a flash, brows coming together as he teases the material apart.

“Vince?” Howard says as calmly as he can manage. 

“Hmm?” Vince responds. He’s not listening, craning his neck to find the straight pins in the multicolored mess on the table.

“Vince? Where were you this afternoon?”

Howard steels himself for the inevitable excuse. The sewing machine hypnotized him. His fabric pencil drew him a map to a hidden treasure trove of Marc Bolan’s feather boas. The bobbins attacked and wound him up in thread, wouldn’t let him go until he found an enchanted pair of scissors and cut himself loose.

“Give us a minute, Howard. ‘M almost through.”

He’s not; the material’s slippery and skittering under Vince’s hands as he tries to pin it. Howard can’t wait any longer; he’s ready to burst.

“Vince. You were supposed to be helping me with the reptiles, not skiving off.”

Vince shrugs, turning back to the sewing machine to restart his seam, carefully lining the sleeve up. Before he can press his foot to the pedal, Howard pulls the cord out of the wall.

Vince’s head snaps up, his brow knitted together. “What you doin’? I was usin’ that!”

“What am  _ I  _ doing? What are  _ you _ doing, Vince? I’ll tell you what you’re doing, sir. You’re neglecting your sworn duties to the zoo, in favor of that… that… whatever that is," Howard finishes, waggling his fingers at the trousershirt.

Vince drops his head to inspect the sleeve, as if Howard pulling the plug has caused irreparable damage to the material.

“It’s a jumpsuit, Howard,” he says. As if it should be apparent. He holds the sleeve up to the light, brightening when he deems it unblemished.

“They went well out of fashion last year, but I’ve got a feeling they’re coming back in. Remember when we dropped the fish at that club? There was this woman on the dance floor, right, and she looked incredible! She was wearin'-”

Howard remembers that club and the dance floor, alright. He feels the same cold flood of emotion welling up in his stomach, pushing up through his chest toward his throat. Oh no, no way, sir. Not now, not ever.

He cuts Vince off, trying to stop the flow, falling back on his own favorite excuse. No, not an excuse. His own favorite…  _ uhhhh…  _ way of thinking. His tried and true philosophy of standards and rules.

“Everything we do in this last week is of the utmost importance, Vince. There are standards we need to live up to, standards of order and decorum. Anything we do now to move away from those standards will cast a pall of absolute disgrace over us and over this zoo. A pall so dark and long that it will follow us wherever we go, like a deep black shadow stealing through the night, creeping around corners, leaping out-”

Vince wrinkles his nose, leaning around Howard to plug the machine back in. 

“Howard, what are you on about?”

Howard doesn’t know. The inside of his head sounds like a brass band colliding with an echo chamber; he feels hot and cold and angry and frustrated and confused and sad all at once. His emotions are pushing upwards into his throat, threatening to choke him. They press up and up and up until they spill over into his mouth and he can’t help what he’s saying.

“What I’m on about, Vince, is that you’re one of the last representatives of this zoo. You should never, ever let anything come between you and your duty to the animals, especially not something as… as flimsy and inconsequential as a jumpsuit. Especially not on a day like today, when it counts the most, when we had an important visitor.”

Vince turns to face him dead on, and scoffs at him. He actually and genuinely scoffs.

“An important visitor? D’you mean Gideon? She worked here forever, Howard, she knows what this place is about.”

“It’s not about that!” Howard says, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “It was… it was simply unfitting for a lady of her high standards to be forced to wait around outside the Reptile House all afternoon in the boiling sun. It was a rude and callous gesture, Vince, completely coarse and uncaring.”

Vince restarts his seam, feeding the fabric through a centimeter at a time with his fingertips. Howard hears him mutter under his breath over the slow hum and clack of the machine.

“Wouldn’t have mattered if she’d have been greeted with a horse-drawn carriage and a dozen roses. Would have turned out the same result.”

The words hit Howard like a slap to the face. His hands fly up, fluttering in the air, punctuating his words.

“How dare you, sir! How dare you insinuate that she’s not interested? The sheer connection between us was too powerful and deep for you to understand. It was a true partnership between intellectual equals. You’re oblivious to the fine arts, the poetry of what we shared. You’re too wrapped up in yourself to know anything about that, you… you… great sparkly tit,” he finishes, pointing an accusing finger at the shimmering jumpsuit.

As soon as he gets the words out, he can feel the air prickle between them.

Vince snorts as he wrenches his jumpsuit from the machine, threads dangling from the sleeve like streamers from the tail of a kite. He stares at Howard, eyes wide and incredulous.

“I’m oblivious? I’m the one who’s too wrapped up in myself?”

Vince is in front of him before Howard can blink. It’s scary how quickly he can still move, remnants of running through the forest with Jahooli showing in the way his muscles tense and twitch. The expression on his face is near feral, his eyes flashing and dark.

His fingers dig into Howard’s shoulders as he surges forward, crushing their lips together in a rough kiss.

Howard’s head hits the wall with a thud as his heart leaps into his throat and Vince is kissing him and he’s kissing Vince back and it’s alarm bells and sirens and everything he’s ever wanted but never let himself feel all at once.

Vince breaks the kiss; Howard can feel his breath coming in hot pants against his wet lips before he drops his grasp on Howard’s shoulders.

“Clearly, Howard, you’re the oblivious one,” he spits, eyes hard as he stalks toward the hut door, slamming it shut so loudly Howard can feel it rattle his back teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A cheeky wink to Vince Noir, rock ‘n’ roll star, and his penchant for trousershirts… uhhh.. jumpsuits. (And surprise kisses.)


	9. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of their fight, the boy who can talk to animals receives guidance from the king of the jungle.

Vince has never been more relieved that no one’s around the Zooniverse. He’s so upset that he feels like he would snap at the first person who looked at him, his hair askew from where he’s raked his hand through it and his chest heaving.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Nothing was supposed to happen like this. They were supposed to stay at the zoo forever, taking care of the animals and having adventures and joking around and doing night watch together. And one night, Howard would pretend to be sleepy, right, and he'd yawn and put his arm around Vince on their bench outside the hut, and he'd get a little warm glow around his heart when Howard finally, finally, finally kissed him.

It wasn't supposed to be Vince kissing Howard during a fight, with his blood pounding in his ears and the hairs stood up on the back of his neck and the Zooniverse closing and all the animals leaving and-

Vince shakes his head, trying to calm down. The sharp click of his boot heels as he marches away from the keeper’s hut helps to clear some of the red from his vision. It sounds nice, a steady, even ticking, so he focuses on the sound and keeps walking until he runs out of pathway. He ends up outside Stuart’s enclosure, fumbling in his pocket for the keys to the latch.

The lion pads into view wearing an intricately embroidered dressing gown, shaking out his damp mane. There’s a bespoke waistcoat and cravat laid out on top of a pile of straw in the corner, next to a wardrobe full of costumes and accessories. 

Vince feels a twinge in his chest; typically, the posh lion’s outlandish outfits are strewn and draped around his enclosure in true dandy form, not packed away tightly. Another reminder of what’s coming in seven short days.

“Sorry, Stuart, didn’t mean to catch you before you’d gotten ready for the night,” Vince says softly, a small wave of fatigue washing over him.

The fight's left him feeling like a blown bulb: overloaded one minute with a surge of hot energy straining to get out, quiet and empty the next. The kiss, on the other hand, has more than made up for that. There's a swirl of emotions more intricately tangled than the thread inside his sewing kit resting squarely in his chest where there should be a warm glow instead. 

Stuart’s deep golden eyes are winking in the low light as he gives Vince his customary greeting, headbutting him gently in the stomach, rubbing his warm face against his chest. Vince feels his knees go a bit wobbly. There’s no one around to see and it doesn’t matter anyway. Nothing matters now that he's gone and caused a right mess.

He lets his limbs go loose and flops down gracelessly. He circles his arms around Stuart’s neck with a sigh, breathing in his warm, dusty scent, and sits back on the enclosure floor, pressing his knees to his chest and tossing his jumpsuit to the side. The material’s wrinkled and damp where he’s had it clenched in his fist, wringing the life out of it. 

Stuart rumbles out a deep purr, curling around Vince to retrieve the jumpsuit. One large paw comes up to turn Vince’s head. He gives Vince a quizzical look, eyeing his rumpled barnet; Vince lets go of his knees and his hands shoot up to fix the wreck of his hair. Stuart nudges them away and sweeps Vince’s hair back into place with his massive pink tongue.

“Whatever is the matter, my friend?” he says, teasing Vince’s fringe back into place with a manicured claw.

Vince sighs again, tracing a crack in the concrete floor with the tip of his boot. “’S nothing, really,” he says, his voice small and unconvincing.

Stuart nudges at him again. “This seems more than a simple fashion emergency, Vince. Please unburden yourself. I will do my best to advise you, should you require more than a shoulder to lean on in your time of need.”

Vince hesitates, twirling a piece of Stuart’s coarse mane between his fingertips, flashes of falling asleep safely on Jahooli’s warm stomach deep in the jungles of India flitting behind his eyes.

“It’s me an’ Howard. We had a fight.”

Stuart hums out a comforting sound, swishing his tail around on the floor behind them. 

“I see. I understand how upsetting that must be, Vince. Do you wish to discuss it further, or would you prefer that I dress, leave my chambers, and make a meal of him immediately?”

Vince giggles, leaning into the solidity of Stuart’s body. “You’re such a joker.” He quiets again, rubbing his fingertips into Stuart’s tawny coat, the only sound his fidgeting accompanied by Stuart’s patient, even breathing. 

Vince opens his mouth a few times before he can order the words out the way he wants them to fall.

”We had a fight about… well, about everythin’. Howard's tryin’ to do a thousand and one things every second, an’ he won’t talk to me. He never talks to me unless he’s hiding behind some puffed-up nonsense that don't mean nothin'. And he won’t listen to me. He interrupts every time I try to tell him something important. And, and! He still thought he had a chance with Gideon! He about bit my head off when I told him she ain’t interested.”

Stuart tosses his head, his mane falling majestically around his face. 

"Mmm, much to consider. Is Howard the only guilty party in this disagreement?"

Vince twists his jumpsuit sleeve, trying to smooth out the wrinkles. He ducks his head.

"Well… no. I suppose I ain't exactly been as helpful as I could."

He doesn't mention his extra stroppy behavior, or skiving off to take Bollo to the shops for a sweets run, or deliberately choosing to work on his new look in the keeper's hut instead of watching Howard throw himself at Gideon.

Vince pauses again, huffing out a frustrated sigh.

“Stuart, I’m so thick. I made everything worse. We fought, and then I kissed him.”

Stuart nods slowly. 

"I see. I understand why you are upset, Vince. Over the years I have spent in this zoo, as a keen observer of human behavior, I have come to one strong and resounding conclusion on human communication, backed with much evidence. I will spare you my theories and my process of determination, but I will impart this hopefully helpful wisdom to you instead.”

“Although you are a member of the human race, Vince, you hold a unique advantage. You are a boy who can speak to the animals. In the animal kingdom, we do not mince words. We do not hide our feelings. We say what we must so we can reach the core of the matter and resolve our differences.”

“To ignore these feelings in favor of distractions, and allow bad blood to accumulate is a fool’s game. My counsel to you is to take this advice from my kingdom to your heart. Once you have gathered your thoughts, speak to Howard and say what you must. Apologize sincerely for your shortcomings, advise him of your feelings, and ask that he do the same for you. Only then will you know where you truly stand.”

Stuart stretches, flexing his paws against the ground and yawning wide.

“I hope this advice will serve you well, Vince. Now, why don’t you look through the wardrobe and take something to refresh yourself for the evening hours? It can serve as a memento of our time and friendship together at this zoo. As an added bonus, I often find a simple adjustment of outfit is enough to bring about a new mood and an enlightened perspective when I’m feeling down. You can change your look and change your luck at the same time, my friend.”

A small smile creeps onto Vince’s downturned face at the thought of raiding Stuart’s closet. Stuart's tail thumps solidly against Vince’s arm as he pads further into his enclosure to don his own evening outfit.

“Don’t be shy. Take anything that speaks to you, Vince, and wear it well.”

“Thanks, Stuart. You’re a star,” Vince calls after him, crossing the enclosure to peek into the wardrobe. It’s an amazing offer, but Stuart and Vince aren’t exactly the same size. Or species. It would take Vince a fair bit of tailoring to adjust any of his getups and there’s no way he’s going back to the keeper’s hut for his sewing machine just yet.

Vince rifles through the colorful fabrics halfheartedly, then turns his attention to the baskets of accessories stashed underneath. A collar could serve as a belt; the lion’s rings are nearly large enough for Vince to wear as bangles. He runs the soft material of a scarf through his fingers and considers what he could pair it with, but puts it back.

A scarf seems too flimsy to remember his friend by. _Too flimsy and inconsequential_ , Vince’s brain supplies unhelpfully, followed by flashes of the softness of Howard’s lips and the little gasp he sucked in before Vince kissed him and the way his arms tensed and then relaxed under Vince’s grasp.

He’s about to close the wardrobe and leave, go pace around the zoo until he can settle his head and his heart, when he notices a box pushed to the back corner of the wardrobe. He snags it out of the corner and shuts the wardrobe doors carefully before blowing the dust off the box.

Vince grins, his head bobbing a happy nodding beat. Now this, with the jumpsuit? Trade the cowboy boots for platforms? This is speaking to him, alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clearly, the lion really did dress himself up as Adam Ant, aka Stuart Leslie Goddard.


	10. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone (eventually) realizes that their switch has been flicked, baby.

Howard paces across the squeaking floorboards of the hut, his heart pounding. They fought, and then Vince kissed him. They fought, and then  _ Vince kissed him _ . His mind won't settle, leaping from Gideon's practically blank, bordering on disdainful expression to Vince's wild, upset scowl. 

_After_ _he had_ _kissed Howard_. 

Vince's fingertips grasping rough into his shoulders, burning through his jacket, pushing him back into the wall. The sharp nip of his teeth. The scorching press of his lips.

Howard has to sit down. Head in his hands, he thinks back to the instances he mentioned Gideon and watched Vince tense up, his jaw setting as his face dropped. 

He thinks back to every time he felt his heart pull him toward Vince, every time they shared a look or stood too closely together or their hands rested on the other’s arm or back or chest for a second too long. Every time one of them said something that made the other go a little red, a thought that lingered through the afternoon into night watch and kept nagging when they were tucked up in their sleeping bags, centimeters apart.

He thinks back to every time he ignored his heart, bottled up what he was feeling, and turned his back or moved toward the task at hand instead.

It makes him want to melt into the floorboards.

Howard likes clear definitions and boundaries; he likes classification and organization and explanation. He doesn’t like messiness, or the scary, inconvenient shock of strong emotions. Every time he had the slightest hint that he might be experiencing an emotion that could be interpreted as something outside his comfort zone, his natural instinct made it easy for him to take his feelings, write them on a mental notecard, and repress them as deeply as he could. But then they had fought, and Vince had kissed him, and the kiss blew the already loose and swinging door to Howard’s bottled-up emotions straight off its hinges. 

Not that he wasn't going to spend half the night trying to hang it back on, rationalizing his actions, fighting with himself, waffling back and forth, before realizing the doorframe was too warped to continue trying. 

Try as he did, Howard couldn't deny that the kiss with Vince changed him.

Howard wakes up in the hut alone and cramped on the sofa the next morning, head feeling like he’s swallowed an entire desert of sand, half an hour late to start the first round of feeding. By himself. He cleans the cages, by himself, and preps the van for transport, also by himself, before throwing the transport instructions on the front seat in frustration. 

Fine. He deserves it. He realizes now that his insistent quest to win Gideon's attention and affection was a waste of his time, the pursuit of an idiot fool too stubborn to let go and own up to reality, own up to his own feelings. He was too thick to acknowledge what was right in front of him. He should have done the true man of action thing and admitted it.

Every time Vince sidled up to him with his big blue eyes and his lopsided grin and a ridiculous story, toeing the ground and swaying his hips, he should have acted.

But no, nothing could get in the way of his responsibilities or his goal of attaining Gideon. And now, he's ruined everything. He's lost everything. Howard Moon, failed man of action, soon-to-be-jobless head keeper of a bankrupt zoo. A stubborn, ridiculous fool, afraid of his own emotions, herding them into a hidden space until he couldn’t hold them back any more. Insensitive, friendless, and alone.

If Vince wanted to kiss him and then leave, he could. But now that Howard's seen the light, he can't do anything more until he talks to Vince. Howard simply has to find him first. 

What Howard's fast finding out instead is he was unaware of how many hiding spots and dark corners are available to a well-motivated and stroppy ragamuffin from the streets.

Vince isn’t in the Chameleon Boudoir or the Koala Palace. Bollo hasn’t seen him, busy as he is with Fossil and the massive piles of rubber bands and pencils he’d dug out of the elephant enclosure. 

Howard manages to dodge Naboo as he floats through the courtyard at top speed, flip phone pressed to his ear; the last thing he needs to complicate his day is the tiny shaman questioning him as to where Vince is and why they’re late to drop off the otters.

Howard ducks into the shower stalls next to the Porpoise Derby pool. He hears a soft noise coming from the back corner of the room, where the rakes and buckets and extra sacks of feed are stacked. It sounds like snuffly snoring. 

Howard freezes in place, tuning his ears to pick up the sound, and when he hears a funny mumbling noise after the snores, he knows it’s either an escaped badger or Vince. When he spots something colorful draped over the dripping faucet of the utility sink, he settles on Vince.

Vince’s t-shirt, the one he had on yesterday, painted with colorful skulls swirling across the front, is half-soaked. There are dark, uneven swipes across the shoulders that Howard doesn’t remember being part of the original design. He grimaces when he peers into the sink basin and sees that it’s stained black. 

Howard tosses the shirt over his shoulder and ventures into the maze of supplies stacked in the spare space, yelping in surprise when he nearly trips over a towel left in the pathway. He wrinkles his nose in irritation, shaking the towel out and folding it in half, fully intending to toss it over his other shoulder to take back to pop in the laundry. 

He freezes when he spots a dried black handprint emblazoned on the material. 

The abandoned t-shirt. The black stains in the sink. The black handprint on the towel. It’s been too quiet at the zoo this past week; no one’s tried to kidnap them. No one’s threatened them with deadly peril. Vince isn’t sulking in some obscure corner, then… he’s been taken by a malevolent entity! One that clearly has a grudge against cleanliness and order!

Howard’s heart sinks when he realizes the last thing he did with Vince was fight with him. He’ll never have the chance to tell Vince his true feelings.

The mumbling sound coming from the back corner intensifies to a sharp groan. Almost a sound of distress, Howard realizes. Maybe it’s not too late; maybe he can reach Vince in time. He catches a flash of silver in the light ahead and runs toward the stacks of feed sacks, brandishing the damp towel as threateningly as he can.

“Don’t worry, Vince! I’ll save you!” he shouts.

*

Vince comes to, the dream he was having crashing down around his shoulders. Howard bounds into his vision, eyes wild, a towel stretched taut in his hands. Shouting something about saving him? 

Vince blinks twice, then rolls back onto his side on the pile of feed sacks. Clearly, he’s still dreaming.

Howard’s on him in a flash, heavy hands roaming over his body, patting him down as if he’s checking for injuries.

“Vince! Vince, are you alright?” 

When he doesn’t answer within half a second, Howard makes a noise of despair and starts patting at his hair. 

“I fear I’ve reached you too late, Vince. You’ve already been compromised.”

Vince bats his hands away, trying to remember what the dye box said about the effects of Northern paws on color retention.

“Leave me alone, Howard, ‘m just havin’ a little sleepy,” he says, before he remembers their fight, remembers he was mad at Howard. Remembers he’s supposed to apologize and talk to him. Remembers he kissed him.

“Vince? Vince! You’re alive!” Howard crows, crushing him to his chest in a tight hug. The part of Howard’s brain that usually wins out, the one still in favor of repression and denial, the one that’s afraid of too much change too fast, lights up and pings the “don’t touch me” sector. He drops Vince unceremoniously back onto the pile of feed sacks, a puff of dust and grit floating into the air.

Vince’s eyes pop open, seeming even bluer framed by the jet black hair resting around his face. He shoots Howard an equally black look.

“’Course I’m alive. No thanks to you dropping me on my head, mucking up my dye job.” 

He swings his feet off the feed sacks to sit up, brushing bits of chaff off of his silver jumpsuit. 

“What were you on about, just now? Saving me from what?”

“Uhhh… I don’t know what you’re talking about. You must have been imagining things. Dreaming,” Howard returns, his eyes darting around the storage space. He waves his hands in front of him, trying to clear the thought from the air, panic setting in.

Thinking about telling Vince all of his escaped feelings and doing it are two very different things. Imagining Vince’s face, his eyes, his soft expression, and seeing him stunningly dark haired and blinking and breathing a few centimeters in front of his own face are two very, very different things. Howard’s palms feel clammy, his tongue feels too big for his mouth, his buttoned collar feels too tight around his neck. 

Vince looks down at his cowboy boots, swinging his feet with a gentle thud against the sacks.

“I have to talk to you, Howard,” he says before going silent.

Icy fingers creep up Howard's back. A chill wind stirs the dust in the air, whipping it around Vince's face, but he doesn't seem to notice.

_ "S’about being where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there.” _

The echo in Howard's head stops booming; the dust settles and the frigid touch on his skin recedes.

Howard sits down an arm's length away from Vince, gingerly resting on the edge of the sacks. He fidgets with his cuffs and runs his fingers over the seam of the feed sack behind him, waiting. He’s the one to break the silence. 

“Talking, eh? That’s usually done with words, little man.”

Vince can’t help the smile that sneaks onto his face. “Shut it, you great Northern ox, I’m thinkin' about what I wanna say.”

“I’ll have to write that one down,” Howard responds, miming reaching into his jacket pocket for his planner, the start of a grin playing around the corners of his mouth. “Vince Noir thinking. One for the history books.”

Vince grins and shuffles closer to him.

*

Outside the showers, Naboo floats silently down from the bin lids, phone pressed to his ear.

“Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute, Bollo, had to take care of something quick. Yeah, I’m coming now. No, it was nothin’." 

Naboo pauses and increases his speed down the path. "Alright, alright, well, give him the sharpener if he wants it, but don’t let him around the rubber bands again; he’ll put an eye out. ”

Naboo snaps his phone shut and shakes his head when it trills again, peering down at the display before thumbing it open. A kiosk shaman’s work is never done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s the origin story of Vince’s S2/S3 raven locks, and it wouldn’t be a Zoo Times story without at least a little man of action interlude.
> 
> Is Naboo omniscient? Is he nagged by the universe and or his sense of responsibility to help two idiots become lovers? For the purposes of this fic, I'd like to think so.
> 
> Eternal thanks to Julian casually informing everyone unprompted during Mindhorn commentary that Noel makes funny noises like a badger when he sleeps.


	11. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies are made, feelings are felt, banter is had, fluff is spun, and the boys realize they’re better as a team

As the sunlight drifts across the room, dust from the feed sacks swirling in spirals through the air, Howard listens to Vince apologize. He tells Howard that he knows he’s been a careless, selfish tit. He tells Howard in a hot rush of words that he misses their lunch breaks together, and night watch, and cups of tea on their bench outside the keeper's hut. He misses Howard just talking to him, telling him important things or jokes or any old nonsense. He trails off, ducking his head shyly before peering at Howard from under his fringe.

Howard flexes his fingers. He can feel Vince’s eyes on him, seeking, looking for reassurance or an answer or anything, really. Anything he’s willing to give. 

A tiny part of him still wants to bolt out of the storage space as fast as he can go and never look back, keep everything safe inside and give nothing away. It’s the most vulnerable part of him that’s still hurt and upset over Vince’s excuses and over Gideon’s rejection, the part of him that’s tired and worn out from keeping all of his emotions inside in favor of crossing another task off of his self-assigned, massive to-do list. 

It’s the part that’s too stubborn to ask for help or admit that he’s wrong.

Vince senses his hesitation and scoots closer, until their legs are nearly touching. He starts swinging his foot again, his jumpsuit-clad leg brushing against Howard’s until he’s fidgeted his way completely into Howard’s space and they’re pressed together from elbow to wrist and hip to knee. 

“Just… please, talk to me, Howard. Tell me what you’re thinkin’. I ain’t gonna laugh at you, I just want to know how you feel. I know we ain’t perfect and things can’t change overnight, but we have to try. We have to be there for each other. We're better together, Howard.”

Howard takes a deep breath, and tells Vince everything. Their conversation is raw and it's rough, but it's honest. It doesn't solve all of their problems. It doesn't take them apart, but it's a step in the right direction to put them back together.   


* 

The remaining tension between them began to dissipate when Howard grabbed the van keys from the peg in Fossil’s office through a barricade of sharpened pencils, and twirled them around his finger before pocketing them, only to have them fall straight out of his ripped seam. 

They bounced off his boot into the bushes, sending up a cloud of pencil shavings under Fossil's window. Vince squawked out a laugh and an “Only you, Howard,” curling the keys into Howard’s palm, his hand lingering over Howard’s, squeezing. Vince twisted Howard's wrist to peek at his watch and nodded in the direction of the otter enclosure.

“Come on, yeah? See if we can make up for lost time.”

Back at the Zooniverse after the transport, the pair make their last round for the evening, checking that the diurnal animals are secure in their enclosures with adequate bedding for the night, and the nocturnal animals are supplied with food and water to start their evenings.

Vince is quiet on the walk back to the keeper’s hut, meandering down the path ahead of Howard, peeking into the enclosures they’ve already secured as if he’s worried that the animals have disappeared. He’s just as quiet as he and Howard get their sleeping bags and spread them out between the sofa and the table. 

Howard turns his back to give Vince some privacy as he strips down to vest and pants. He zips himself into his sleeping bag before Howard can sling his Zooniverse jacket over the back of the chair, and mumbles out a soft “g’night,” turning away from Howard to face the sofa.

_ That’s… kind of odd _ , Howard thinks. Maybe he’s just tired out from the last 24 hours: the fight, the kiss, the conversation in the storage space, the transport, their last round. Fair enough; Howard’s dead tired from all of that himself, and not feeling remarkably conversational. 

Howard squirms to get comfortable in his sleeping bag, waiting to hear Vince’s breathing slow. Usually, Vince is out like a light, mouth slack and lashes brushing his cheek like an innocent. His odd little sleep noises - hiccups and murmurs and exact replicas of sounds Howard could swear he’d heard the animals making earlier during the day - typically help lull Howard into his own sleep. 

Howard twists and turns and flips his pillow over and tries lying on his stomach instead of his back as the sleeping bag tangles uncomfortably around his legs. He tries writing the second line of his novel in his head. As tired as he is, nothing that he’s doing seems to help. He gets desperate enough to start counting backwards from 100,000 when sleep doesn’t come. He’s somewhere around 98,673, right on the edge of welcoming a fuzzy, warm slumber, when Vince breaks the silence.

“Howard? Howard, are you awake? Howard?”

With Herculean effort, Howard manages a “mmmmpfff?”

"Howard, can I ask you somethin'? ‘s a bit nippy down here, an’ I’m cold.”

Vince hesitates for a fraction of a second before continuing, his voice near a whisper.

“Can we zip our bags together, Howard?”

Not wanting to lose his chance at dropping into much needed sleep, Howard wriggles over in the direction of Vince’s voice. He unzips his bag just enough, then reaches out blindly to fumble with the zipper on Vince’s. He roots around until his hand brushes Vince’s arm, fingers curling around his bicep, pulling him towards his sleeping bag until Vince understands what Howard’s doing and he clambers in.

There’s not a lot of wiggle room left with both of them in one bag, especially when Howard zips them shut, but Vince is nothing if not a determined wiggler. With every squirm, he presses his bare legs into Howard’s and brings Howard closer to wake. They manage to find a comfortable position when Howard wraps his arms around Vince to stop him from moving, one hand resting on the dip in his spine, one on the back of his neck. 

Vince tucks his nose into Howard’s neck and settles, waiting the space of a few seconds before breathing out Howard’s name again. Howard rumbles out a “hmmm” that Vince feels vibrating through his own chest, pressed together as they are. Howard has to concentrate to hear the next part, coming closer and closer to consciousness as he feels Vince’s body deflate in his embrace.

“Howard… what if they all forget me?”

The worry in Vince’s voice is apparent. Howard can tell that this is a thought that he’s held on to, a jagged one that hasn't smoothed despite the number of times he's turned it over in his mind during the past week. It’s a thought best expressed in the safety of the dark. 

Howard squeezes Vince tighter to his chest, trying to stop any of the remaining happiness in his body from escaping. He clears his throat and tries to gather his thoughts before speaking.

“Vince. How could the animals ever forget the keeper who understood their problems and listened to their stories?”

He can feel Vince’s body relax against his almost instantly.

“D’you really think so, Howard?” he says, the hopeful catch in his breath apparent.

“Yep,” Howard confirms, rubbing his hand up and down Vince’s back. “You’re one of a kind, Vince. No one could ever forget you.”

The pliant warmth and weight of his body on top of Howard’s is soothing, dragging Howard back down the tunnel towards slumber. All the times he’s laid awake on the hut floor, the space of a breath between them, and he could have had this instead? He was a fool and it doesn't matter because he has it now and he's going to work very carefully to preserve it. He grins sleepily, his teeth glinting in the light from the moon.

“Personally, I could never forget you. Your ridiculous hair, your pointy face, your ice cold hooves, freezing up my heroic, masculine legs when I’m trying to sleep….”

He drifts off from his cataloguing as Vince first opens his mouth in mock shock and then presses his cold toes deeper into Howard’s warm calf.

“As if! My feet have won awards from here to Preston for their perfect temperature. It’s your legs that’re the problem… they’re like two skinny twigs stuck in a ball of twine.”

“I’ll have you know,” Howard yawns, “they’re perfectly proportioned to my frame. I have a signed statement from the Twine Manufacturer’s Guild of Greater London attesting to that fact.”

Vince snorts and wriggles deeper into Howard’s embrace. He rubs Vince’s back until they both drop off to sleep.

Better together, indeed.


	12. Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fossil leaves for America, and the boys spend their last night at the Zooniverse. There’s reminiscing and there’s kissing, future plans are made, and someone inevitably ends up in the swan pond.

Howard crosses the final line off of the transport schedule and sets the clipboard down on Fossil’s windowsill. Every cage in the zoo is empty; every animal has been rehomed. He can hardly believe that he and Vince did it, that he won’t be carrying fruit to the parrots or deep cleaning the tiger enclosure ever again. No more Porpoise Derbies, no more seed distribution, no more night watch.

And no more insistent orders from Fossil. Howard checks his watch. By his estimation, Fossil should be on board his boat and or plane back to the States, nearing the middle of an ocean. Howard wasn’t picky about the details; at this point, any ocean or method of transportation would do. The lights are off in his office, which is stacked to the ceiling with A4 paper.

While Howard and Vince had packed the back of the van with Stuart’s cases that afternoon, Bollo was patiently hauling paper from the elephant enclosure a case at a time, shifting it about until Fossil was satisfied he’d constructed the ultimate paper castle.

“Ooo, Bollo, hand me that shredder! We need to make a moat!” Fossil crowed, brandishing two handfuls of paper a shade brighter than his safari suit, and a gigantic grin at the prospect of being allowed unfettered access to a sharp object.

Howard waved as he snagged the keys to the van for the final time.

“Goodbye, Mr. Fossil. Vince and I won’t be back in time to see you off, so best of luck in America.”

Fossil bounded over to the window, arms outspread. Howard recoiled, expecting Fossil to leap out and tackle him at the speed he was traveling. He stopped short, planted a foot on the sill and clasped his hands to his chest instead.

“Alas, we must part, my sweet prince! Never shall I see your face again! I will think of you often, and with great joy in my heart! Each time I bathe in the majesty of a glorious crimson sunset… each time I see a bead of dew lie upon the wavering petal of a gentle flower… each time I hear a noble raven flap its gossamer wings-”

“Uh, thanks a lot, I guess? But I really need to be going now, Mr. Fossil. Finish up the final transport?”

Fossil turned to scowl at Howard. “Moon, not you, you big doofus. I’m talking to my little Vincey Princey!”

Fossil waved, grinning, and blew Vince a kiss where he stood further down the path, a confused but wary expression on his face.

“Yep. Alright. We’re leaving. Bye,” Howard said, shooting him a black look as Fossil started waggling his eyebrows at Vince.

“Send us a postcard when you get to America! And some sweets!” Vince called back, waving over his shoulder as Howard pulled him to the van to start the transport.

Howard takes the keys out of his newly mended jacket pocket and nearly hangs them back up on the peg inside Fossil’s office window. Force of habit, he supposes. He hefts them in his hand, flicking through until he comes to two identical silver keys, sharp and bright among the worn ones on the ring. He considers them carefully, then pockets the keyring and turns down the paper-strewn pathway in search of Vince.

It’s eerie without the usual nighttime chirps and squeaks, the cages sterile and neat as pins. Howard’s thankful he doesn’t have to walk far before he spots Vince outside the keeper’s hut, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea, a spare sitting in Howard’s place on their bench. 

“Hey, little man. You about ready to head out?” 

Vince motions for him to sit down. Howard knows he must be feeling rough, the residual dread of their final transport still scraping at him. 

The image of Stuart resting his large head on Vince's shoulder and nuzzling at his black locks before nobly inclining his head to bid the pair of them farewell is one that Howard won't forget. He'd caught the tail end of Stuart whispering something in Vince's ear, mostly drowned out by Vince's sniffles. Something that had sounded like, "Here and now is all that counts." In light of past blunders and their fragile new pact, it's not bad advice.

Vince smiles at Howard, handing him his favorite mug. “Thought we might have a little walk about first. Check the place out one last time before we go.”

“It’s all ours ‘til tomorrow morning. One final night watch, then.”

Howard takes a sip of his tea, and raises his mug to Vince. Vince smiles and hums out an “Mmm,” leaning forward to wipe a smudge off his boot. When he sits back up, he’s several inches closer to Howard.

Howard yawns. He stretches his arms out and one comes to rest behind Vince, He snuggles even closer. Howard nods, surveying the golden light falling across the Zooniverse.

“One final night watch, yes sir. Vince, did I ever tell you about the time I defeated a raging kangaroo in hand to hand combat?” 

Vince snorts, his eyebrows lifted. “What d’you mean, did you ever tell me? Howard, I was there! And I think you’ll find you had some help,” he sulks, setting down his empty mug and mimicking how he’d singlehandedly assisted.

“No, Vince, listen,” Howard says, turning to face him. “Do you remember the time I defeated a raging kangaroo in hand to hand combat? It was an ordinary day at the Zooniverse. I’d run the morning’s Porpoise Derby and swept the cages after. We’d done seed distribution.”

Vince nods, and Howard leans back on the bench, settling in.

“No one could have known what was going to come next.”

Vince sits forward, his sulk replaced by excitement. One final night watch with Howard, then, story and all.

*

The Killeroo. The mutants in Bainbridge’s secret lab. Monkey Hell and the tundra and the Jungle Room. Vince listens in rapture as Howard walks back through the adventures they’ve shared, his lips pursed in a grin as he shakes his head at Howard’s man of action flights of fancy and laughs at their mishaps. He starts to interject with his own reminisces, and they’re finishing each other’s sentences before either one realizes. 

Howard stills, fidgeting with something in his jacket pocket, eyes turned in the direction of a crumpled ball of paper blowing down the path in the night breeze.

“We had some great times, some great adventures at this zoo. Met some crazy characters along the way and learned some lessons. But all things have to come to an end, Vince.”

The paper comes to rest at Vince’s feet; he steps on it with the toe of his boot before it can escape in the night breeze, unfolding it and smoothing out the creases against his thigh. He folds it this way and that, until he has a halfway decent paper plane. 

Howard clears his throat once, then twice, then again until Vince stops fidgeting and looks up at him. 

“I, uh… I had a chat with Naboo about what he was doing once his contract with the zoo expired. He said something about a council, or a board? Something to do with shaman? It all sounded very serious and official."

"In the meantime, he’s going to be helping Bollo out with DJing on the side. They’ve got a regular slot lined up every Monday night through the summer. Anyway, Naboo mentioned he had a flat in Dalston; he and Bollo are up there now, getting things sorted out. It’s a good sized flat… it has two spare bedrooms. I don’t know if you’re interested, but Naboo made a couple of spare keys, and-”

Howard trails off, taking one of the identical keys off the ring and offering it to Vince. Vince drops his plane and leaps for it, squeezing his arms around Howard’s middle.

“’Course I’m interested! Cheers, Howard! This is genius!”

Vince's eyes are sparkling in the moonlight. A stray strand of hair is resting on his cheek.

Before Vince can move away, Howard leans forward and presses their lips together. The kiss is soft at first, almost chaste, neither believing that it’s actually happening. Then Vince inches forward, his knee bumping into Howard’s, and Howard’s hand flies to cup his jaw. The ends of Vince’s hair tickle his fingers as he parts his lips, kissing him gently, as if the new understanding between them will shatter.

When he draws back, pressing one last kiss to Vince’s lips, his eyes are closed. They crackle when he opens them. He's smiling in disbelief, shaking his head.

“You’re ridiculous, Howard. You would have to wait until our last night here to do that, wouldn’t you?”

*

It’s nearly midnight. Every time Howard and Vince have broken apart for breath, meaning to get up and finish locking the rest of the buildings and putting the zoo in its final order, one of them has turned back to steal a kiss and the entire cycle has started over again. Howard finally pulls back, a hand on Vince’s shoulder as he makes a little noise in the back of his throat, his breath catching in his chest in the moonlight.

“Come on, Vince,” Howard pants. “Let’s make our last round and go lock up. Maybe then we can find a quiet place...” he trails off, raising a brow. 

“Ain’t gonna get much quieter than here,” Vince responds, leaning back on the bench with his legs spread and his hair rumpled. 

Howard leans over to kiss him again, moving back slightly every time their lips make contact until they’re both standing. Vince pouts at the trick, but follows along behind as Howard checks the lock on each building and enclosure.

Vince wanders as he waits, picking up stray sheets of paper that have blown away from Fossil’s office. Howard finds him by the swan pond, folding the sheets into more paper planes, idly chucking them in the direction of the pond. There are a few littered around his feet, and some floating lazily on top of the water.

“I could have you sent down for casual littering, sir,” Howard quips, plucking a plane from Vince’s hand and sailing it in the direction of the pond.

“You would never,” Vince responds distractedly, scooping a plane off the ground and angling his throw so it lands directly in the center of the pond. He grabs some sheets that have snagged on the bushes nearby and makes quick work of them, folding two planes and pulling a marker from his pocket. 

He twirls a finger at Howard until he turns around; he uses Howard’s broad shoulders as a flat surface to illustrate both planes. Howard’s has a caricature of his face surrounded by music notes along one wing; Vince’s has a monkey face and his name printed along the side.

“Closest to the center of the pond wins?” Vince says.

“Wins what?”

“I dunno. First pick of the bedrooms at the flat?”

Howard grins. “Alright, you’re on.” He slides his jacket off and squares up, limbering his arm and his wrist with miniscule practice motions, not wanting to give his secret throwing technique away. “Prepare to witness Howard Moon’s best moves.” 

Vince giggles. “I’ve seen your moves, Howard. You’ll prob'ly want to borrow someone else’s.”

“Hey now, don’t knock these moves before you’ve observed them in action, little man.”

Vince shakes his head fondly, then turns away as Howard continues to rehearse, using his thigh as a flat surface to scribble something inside the wing of his plane.

“Hey now, no tampering,” Howard says, trying to peer around to see what Vince has scrawled. Vince hunches over, going shy as he finishes writing. 

“Uh uh, no peeking, Howard. ‘S a secret.”

They line themselves up at the lip of the pond, tiptoeing closer until they're flush with the water. Vince counts down from three, and they launch their planes into the pond. They slice through the air and land squarely in the center, nose to nose.

“Best two outta three, then?” Vince offers, reaching behind him for another plane. Perhaps it’s a trick of the light, Howard thinks later on, but as Vince bends on wobbly legs, it looks like his footing is off. From where Howard’s standing, it looks like he’s slipping directly into the pond.

Howard grabs at Vince’s belt, studs and white leather glowing in the moonlight. He misses, and feels his own footing slide dangerously. He falls directly into the pond with a splash that echoes around the empty Zooniverse enclosures.

He can hear Vince squeaking in distress above him as his fingertips brush damp paper and close around the planes at the center of the pond. He balls them up in his fist as Vince fishes him out of the pond by his back pockets and belt loops, thoroughly soaked.

Howard pushes his dripping hair out of his eyes with his free hand, pond slime laying thick on both of his shoulders like epaulettes, greenish water puddling around his sodden boots.

Vince shakes his head at the state of him, standing on tiptoe to pluck a stringy green weed out of his hair, a bemused grin on his face.

“You find this funny?” Howard says. “Amusing?”

“No,” Vince giggles.

“Alright. Okay, then,” Howard responds, nodding his head calmly before darting his free hand out to settle on Vince’s hip and kissing him. 

Vince huffs out a breath; Howard’s dripping manky pond water all over his face and his shoulders, but he can’t move away now and break their kiss. Howard’s hand drifts down to his arse, leaving a wet print there when he pulls away.

Vince wrinkles his nose at the same time Howard suggests, “Showers?” He barely has time to grab his jacket off the ground and hide the planes in the pocket before Vince is pulling him in the direction of the shower stalls.

*

“Howard, I’ve got a confession to make,” Vince says, nodding in the direction of the bins outside the shower stall windows. “Now that we’re tryin’ to be truthful an’ all.”

Howard nods. “Let me guess. It’s about what happened with the invisible butterfly.”

Vince’s eyes go big. “How’d you know?!” he squawks.

Howard shrugs, recalling Vince stumbling over his words and going a bit red when Howard emerged from the shower, slightly peeved and dripping wet in his towel.

“Looking back, it was incredibly obvious.”

Vince ducks his head and curls his shoulders in, Howard’s jacket slung around them making him look small and sheepish and innocent.

“Might as well come clean, then.” He pauses, his speech becoming animated.

“I did catch the invisible butterfly, right, but he had an entire butterfly family! Ten kids an’ a wife an’ a dog, an’ two more little ‘uns on the way. But ‘e wasn’t as nice as he seemed, Howard, ‘e was meeting his girlfriend in the moth enclosure. Imagine that, a moth mistress! I let him go, told ‘im, ‘Go back to your wife! Don’t let me catch you ‘round here again.’” Vince shakes his fist for extra effect. “Ten kids, Howard, and he was steppin’ out!”

“Uh… wow, Vince. That’s quite a story. I have to admit, it’s not exactly the confession I was expecting,” Howard responds, leaving his sodden boots by the door.

Vince wrinkles his brow. “Why, what were you thinkin’?”

Howard tosses his buttondown in the direction of the utility sink, ducking into the shower stall to turn the water on. He goes a little red, a flush spreading across his cheeks.

“I was expecting you to confess to peeping. On me. In the, uh. When I was, uh.” Howard gestures behind him to the running water. They might be attempting to be more truthful with each other, but there’s certain things Howard still can’t bring himself to say. “In the shower that day.”

Vince shakes his head, the picture of innocence. “Course not, Howard!”

“Oh. Right, then.” Howard says, fiddling with his trouser button. He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“Could you grab us a spare uniform?”

Vince nods, his tongue darting out to his canine as Howard shuts the stall door. He hesitates.

“Howard?”

“Yeah?” Howard responds, peeking over the door with his hair full of suds.

“You know I grew up in the jungles, right?”

“Yeah?”

“I learned how to sneak about from Jahooli. You’d never catch me if I peeped on you,” he says, a devilish glint in his eyes.

He dodges Howard’s trousers as they fly over the stall door, and scampers to get Howard a spare uniform, giggling all the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stuart's advice courtesy of Room at the Top by Adam Ant.
> 
> Naboo and Bollo’s Monday night slot starting in the summer is a cheeky reference to S2 airing on Mondays in July and August of 2005.
> 
> Howard really needs to be more careful around bodies of water.


	13. Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fossil left for America… but did he really leave for America?

All is quiet at the Zooniverse. The Porpoise Pool is bathed in gentle moonlight. The ripples on the swan pond after Howard’s accidental dunking have settled. But deep in the heart of the paper castle in Fossil’s office, there’s a stirring. A few stray sheets flutter down from one of the castle turrets as it wavers in the night breeze.

Fossil’s curled up under his desk, his leg kicking at the turret as he dreams. He dreams, and kicks, and dreams, and kicks, and the turret sways, spilling a cascade of paper down onto the floor, dangerously close to toppling.

Fossil emerges from under his desk, crawling out to yawn and stretch. He rolls his shoulders and his neck, performing a few limbering dance moves before flourishing his wrist to check his watch.

He nods to himself. Yes, he’s perfectly on schedule for his departure. Only six hours late.

He picks up his suitcase and clicks it open, humming to himself as he checks to make sure he’s packed everything he’ll need for his journey. He sets his ticket, ID, and passport aside. Index cards, Blu-Tack, Pritt Stick, ballpoint pens, a spare pair of socks, a banana, and a massive sack of cash. He nods, satisfied, and clicks the suitcase shut. Yeah, that’s everything.

He sits down and slings his feet up to rest on the corner of his desk, lifting the receiver. He winds the phone cord around his fingers as he dials.

“Yeah, is this the Speedy Fast Cab Company? Great.” His voice switches from his regular boom to a posh, moneyed waver, his brow arching.

“Yes, indeed, my kind sir. May I request a cab be dispatched at once?” He gives the Zooniverse address, miming adjusting an ascot that he’s not wearing.

“Yes, my good sir, that is the correct address. May I inquire as to the time of arrival?” He listens in concentration, humming his assent when he receives his answer.

“Thank you, young squire, thank you indeed. I bid you a fine evening. Farewell.” He stands and performs an intricate bow, the phone still pressed to his ear.

After a solid thirty seconds of dial tone, he hangs up and checks his watch again, then opens his bottom desk drawer. He pulls out a thick robe, a scrub brush, and a rubber duck.

“Wow, just enough time for a shower!” he beams, supplies in one hand, suitcase in the other, as he leaps over his windowsill, the paper castle crashing down in an explosion of white sheets behind him.

*

Howard’s feeling loose and jazzy fresh in his clean, dry, pond-scum-free uniform. He’s buttoning his final button when he feels Vince’s fingers playing at his hem.

“Howard?” he asks, biting at his lip, ducking his head to make his eyes seem extra big. He flicks his head toward the feed sacks, tossing his fringe out of his eyes, twisting his fingers in Howard’s fresh, clean shirt, using it as leverage to whisper in Howard’s ear.  _ That’ll take ages to iron out _ , Howard thinks, before he feels Vince’s hot breath on his ear.

“S’real quiet in here, Howard. Why don’t you an’ me head over there, an’-”

Howard can’t hear much of Vince's suggestions over the blood rushing in his ears, but when he hears footsteps skipping up the path, he freezes. It takes all of his concentration to tune out the soft sounds of Vince’s evening plans for the pair of them and focus on what’s happening outside.

Strains of a familiar whistle waft in through the door. His eyes widen.

_ Fossil? _

Howard abandons his button and grabs Vince, dragging him to the feed sacks.

Vince squeaks out a gasp of surprise before trying to regain some of his cool. “You're awful eager,” he says approvingly, unable to hide the goofy grin splitting his face. He practically leaps at Howard, trying to kiss him and pull his buttondown over his head all at once.

Howard panics; Fossil’s nearly to the door and he’s going to see them as soon as he comes in. Howard pins Vince to the wall of feed sacks to try to stop him from moving. If anything, it only makes him noisier, squirmier, and grabbier.

Howard puts a hand over his mouth just as Fossil bursts through the doors, slinging his suitcase to one side. Vince’s eyes go wide when he hears. It still doesn’t stop him from licking Howard’s palm teasingly. Howard scowls at him and pulls his hand away, mouthing at him to stop it.

Fossil’s white loafers and safari suit follow his suitcase in short order, his blue trousers landing in the vicinity of the feed sacks. He dances over to the shower stall, turning the water on, singing at the top of his lungs as he steps under the spray and starts scrubbing his back with the brush.

“Ahhhh, maximum exfoliation for Bobby Bob Bob… yeah, that’s the good stuff. Oh! Mama! A little! More! To the left!

“I thought he was gone, Howard,” Vince whispers, tugging at Howard’s jacket. The way that Howard bustled them into the storage space blocked Vince’s view of Fossil’s very, uh, very… bare assets.

Howard shakes his head, trying to recover. “Yeah, I did too. Let’s go,” he returns, stepping toward the exit to the feed sack maze.

The door to the shower stall bursts open, the water cutting off as Fossil emerges resplendent in a cloud of bubbles, topped with a shampoo mohawk.

“Oh, Mr. Ducky… where’d you go?” he singsongs, bringing a hand up to shade his eyes as he peers around the building. “You’re missing out on bathtime fun!”

He whistles as he searches the area around the utility sink. When he comes up short, he bounds over to the feed sacks, losing bubbles at the pace of a jet dumping fuel. _ The jet he was supposed to be on right now _ , thinks Howard.

He moves back, pressing Vince further into the feed sacks, and holds his breath. He can hear Fossil directly on the other side, rummaging in his discarded safari suit pockets.

Howard's ready to burst by the time Fossil turns away. He opens the door to the building and charges outside, the slap of his wet feet growing distant.

Howard breathes a sigh of relief and grabs Vince’s hand.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here before he comes back.”

They’re nearly past the feed sacks again when Fossil sails back inside, swooping Mr. Ducky through the air to the showers. Howard stops short and Vince crashes into his back, hissing as Howard flattens the both of them against the feed sacks again.

“You scared me for a minute there, little buddy! I thought you flew all the way to America without me!” Fossil chides. The water starts up again, accompanied by Fossil’s enthusiastic singing voice booming out a series of “la da da da”’s in the hard-tiled shower space. He lowers his pitch and then raises it until his voice echoes shrill in the enclosure. 

Howard rolls his eyes, reaching for Vince’s hand. The pair of them leg it out of the building as fast as they can. Howard pulls them to the shadow of the nearest door, and locks it behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No cheeky winks to future series here; I just wanted to say again how fun it is to write chaotic Fossil.


	14. Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut times in the elephant enclosure, or, the reason why Howard Really enjoys office supplies. Plus, the final fate of the Zooniverse.

They walk down a dark hallway, pass through another door, and end up in the elephant enclosure, surrounded by the remnants of the Zooniverse’s massive office supply stock. There are pens, hanging folders, thumbtacks, rulers, Sellotape, all perfectly organized, lined up neatly on shelves and in boxes. There’s a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

Howard feels an immense relief wash over him at the quiet order after nearly being caught in Fossil’s particularly loud brand of chaos. He walks around the enclosure like he’s touring a museum, stopping in front of the neat displays and admiring their individual merits.

Vince sidles up to him, nudging him with his hip.

“What now? Can’t do much night watch stuck inside this supply closet nightmare.”

Howard makes a face. “Nightmare’s a little harsh. I quite like it.”

He comes to a stop in front of a pyramid of staples, reverently examining the pattern that they’re stacked in.

Vince slips up behind him, his arms snaking around Howard’s waist, resting his head on Howard’s shoulder. He presses a kiss to the back of Howard’s neck. Howard shivers, running his hands over an open box of pens. He closes his eyes and listens to the gentle clicking they make rolling against each other as Vince slides his hands lower, over Howard’s stomach, coming to rest on his hips. He puts a hand on the pull of a filing cabinet drawer as Vince’s hand dips to the button of his trousers.

The door’s locked securely behind them. Howard doubts they could find a quieter, more secure place at the zoo than the elephant enclosure slash office supply haven right now. He spreads a spare blanket on the floor, and spreads Vince out beneath him.

*

Howard wakes to Vince’s snuffly snores against his chest and his warm hand resting on his arse. Bit by bit, surrounded by the crisp scent of paper and ink, it comes back to Howard. The soft, happy hums Vince made as Howard had kissed him and undressed him. The breathy giggles he made as Howard kissed behind his ear, his hands pushing weakly at Howard’s shoulders. 

"You’re ticklin’ me, stop it,” he gasped out as Howard complied and sucked at his earlobe instead. The strangled little cry Vince made as Howard reached down, trailing his fingertips along Vince’s belly, before taking his cock in hand and stroking him firmly.

He especially remembers how beautiful Vince looked, mouth wet and open and panting, his jet black locks surrounded by a rainbow of paperclips that they’d knocked down in their frenzy. How he moaned Howard’s name, telling him how long he’d waited for this, how good Howard felt, even better’n he imagined, how good he was making Vince feel, even better’n his wildest dreams, when he came.

How, not long after, he’d tackled Howard to the ground, licked his lips, and unzipped Howard’s trousers, the glint in his eyes telling Howard how long he’d waited to do this. How Howard tangled his fingers in Vince’s hair as he ran his tongue down Howard’s shaft slowly, teasing him with his hands and his mouth, Howard’s hand gently cupping the back of his head as Vince hollowed his cheeks and sucked in earnest.

How Howard came with Vince’s name on his lips, overturning a massive box of pens and an entire basket of elastic bands as he tried to get a grip on the nearest shelf. How they cuddled together and then fell asleep, Vince’s nose pressed into the base of Howard’s throat, a sticky note stuck to the curve of his arse.

All things considered, Howard would rank this as their most successful night watch.

*

Naboo hops down off his magic carpet, motioning for Bollo to join him. He leaves the carpet hovering in the moonlight; he doesn’t expect fulfilling his final contractual obligation will take him very long.

The tiny shaman stretches, limbering up before reaching into his robes for his scroll. He comes out emptyhanded, patting himself down and finding nothing.

“Bollo? Have you seen my scroll?”

Bollo ponders a moment. “Ancient magic scroll? With silver baton? About dis big?” He holds out his index fingers in an approximation of the scroll’s length.

“No, Bollo, the one we picked up at Hobbycraft last week. Of course, my ancient magic scroll.” Naboo rolls his eyes.

“Uhhh… Bollo leave scroll on coffee table as decoration. Flat look empty, unlived in without it.”

Naboo sighs.

“Fine. I need some paper and a pen. D’you think you can handle that?”

Bollo nods. After his time spent with Fossil, he knows just where to find everything they need.

*

Howard wakes a second time. Vince’s face is still pressed into his chest, and his hand is still firmly gripping Howard’s arse. He snuggles into Vince’s grasp and settles down to try to fall back asleep. He figures they haven’t technically completed night watch until the sun rises; they have a couple of hours left, and this is one final duty Howard is more than willing to see through to the end.

Howard’s heart leaps into his throat when he hears the door to the elephant enclosure rattling. His entire body jerks in surprise, his arms tightening around Vince, jostling him from his slumber.

“Mmm, Howard… lemme sleep. Ain’t ready for roun’ two yet,” he slurs, nuzzling into Howard’s chest.

“Vince, wake up,” he says, a note of panic entering his voice. He moves to reach for his trousers, but Vince’s grasp around him tightens.

“Shhhh. S’not time to get up, Howard,” he mumbles, sounding more awake. “Give ‘s another hour.”

The rattling to the door intensifies. Howard feels ice in his stomach when he hears an irritated voice outside the door in between the banging.

“What you doing now?”

“Door locked. Bollo try to use monkey strength to open.”

A put-upon sigh, two week’s worth of irritation and responsibility contained within it. 

"You could have asked for the keys, Bollo.”

Howard uses the pause in the conversation to shake Vince fully awake, pointing at the door when he blinks himself awake and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. Howard puts a finger to his lips, then mimes a tiny, angry shaman in a turban and flowing robes, followed by a gorilla trying to force the door open, and Vince cringes, throwing Howard his trousers and jacket. They both freeze, then speed up dressing when the conversation resumes, sharing a look of utter horror at a second possible discovery.

“Bollo? Have you seen my keys?”

“Naboo’s keys….” Bollo trails off. “Silver keyring? About dis wide?”

“Yeah, Bollo. Let me guess, they’re next to the scroll on the coffee table in the flat back in Dalston?”

“No,” Bollo says proudly. “Bollo put them in fruit bowl on table next to door. Too easy to lose keys. Put them in one place, always remember them.”

Naboo’s eye roll is almost audible through the door. “Thanks a lot, Homes and Gardens.”

Howard and Vince don’t stick around to hear the rest. Mostly clothed save a misplaced sock and an accessory or two, they race down the corridor, through the courtyard, and breathless out the Zooniverse gates one final time.

*

Howard hop-walks down the sidewalk, one foot bare and one booted, fishing in his jacket pocket for his keyring. Vince is clinging to his arm, looking backward over his shoulder every few steps as if he’s afraid Naboo and Bollo will blink into existence behind them.

Howard comes to a stop in front of the transport van, internally cursing that he’d parked so far away from the Zooniverse, and unlocks the door, cringing as it lets out an ungodly squeak. He hops in behind the wheel, then reaches to unlock Vince’s door, his hands moving in agitation through the air ahead of him.

“Come on, get in. Let’s go before Bainbridge pops out of the bushes and tells us this has been one shared hallucination or something.”

Vince clambers halfway up into the van, his hair a riot, t-shirt on inside out, before stopping.

“Wait a minute, Howard, we can’t steal the van! It’s zoo property!”

Howard reaches over to pull him the rest of the way in, slamming his door shut, grinding the key in the ignition, and putting his booted foot firmly on the accelerator. 

"We aren't stealing it. Fossil sold it to me before he left.”

“Oh,” Vince says, ruffling his hair, reaching for the radio. “Cool.”

Howard keeps one hand on the wheel and stretches the other to rest on the seat behind Vince.

“Who knows, maybe this can be our first project. Two retired zookeepers wake up with the dawn, do some stretching, have some tea and toast, and get out to the garage. Get our hands dirty. Make this old thing come alive. Put in an extra row of seats, renovate the back area to hold cargo. The possibilities are endless, Vince: you, me, and a trusty set of spanners.”

Vince runs his eyes around the cab, noting Howard’s bare foot and half-buttoned shirt, catching the reflection of his own wild hair in the windscreen. 

“Yeah, Howard… right. Maybe we can have a little break first before any new adventures?”

*

“Keep goin’. Keep goin’. A little more. Keep it straight, don’t turn! You’re goin’ straight back out, Bollo, just the way we came. Y’ain’t gotta turn anything, just come back out straight. A little more… more… more… alright, that’s good. Stop there.”

Naboo guides Bollo out of the Zooniverse gates on the carpet, scowling when Bollo takes a few seconds to actually stop.

“Bollo not understand why he has to go in reverse. If Bollo turn around, he come out of gates facing them, it be better for everyone-”

Naboo eyes him. “Proper magic carpet maneuvering is essential for every familiar to master, Bollo. Now, d’you wanna hand me the spell so we can get outta here, or argue about your trainin’?”

Bollo sighs and hands Naboo a neat stack of papers, the sheets pulled from the wreckage of Fossil’s office. They'd given up on opening the elephant enclosure after Naboo noticed a windstorm of paper blowing from the direction of Fossil's office.

Bollo had had to excavate to find one of the many pens Fossil had stashed around the corners so they could rewrite the spell from memory, a black look on Naboo's face the entire time he tried to remember the ancient pronunciations in the middle section.

Naboo clears his throat, preparing to recite, and frowns.

“This says ‘Distraction Spell,’ Bollo.”

“Flip page over,” Bollo says. He’d attempted to take dictation for the first time, to varying success.

Naboo turns the page and starts to recite.

“’Destruction Spell.’ At least that bit’s right.” 

Bollo tunes the rest out, his mind turning to assembling the perfect DJ set for his Monday residency. He has the beginning and ending tunes; it’s just the entire middle bit that’s giving him trouble….

He’s brought back to the present moment when the Zooniverse gates start wobbling in his line of vision. They waver once, twice, then a third time, before dissolving in a rainbow flash of colors. There’s a noise that’s reminiscent of an angry bundle of wasps being sucked into a powerful hoover, then all is quiet, except for the rattling sound of a loud exhaust. Naboo rolls his eyes; that’ll be Howard and Vince, then, leaving the Zooniverse with about five seconds to spare. Typical.

The entire span of the Zooniverse is bare, blinked into complete destruction. More than enough to satisfy Bainbridge’s solicitors.

Well, the latter half’s right, at least.

Naboo looks at his feet, then stoops to pick up a snowglobe about the size of a standard issue crystal ball. Trapped inside is the entire Zooniverse in miniature. 

Naboo brings the globe up to his eye, spotting Fossil’s office crushed in paper, the swan pond littered with paper planes, and two empty mugs resting on the bench outside the keeper’s hut. 

He nods. Pronunciation must've been a bit iffy, but it's a pleasant surprise.

He tucks the snowglobe underneath his arm like an oversized rugby ball and climbs up onto the carpet in front of Bollo. He stashes the spell deep in his robes. Might come in handy later.

They head back to Dalston in time to find Howard and Vince crashed out on the sofa in the flat, Vince drooling onto Howard’s shoulder, Howard’s hand curled into Vince’s messy hair as the sun comes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know the van is different in S2 (possibly a VW Type 2 T3 Transporter? 80s? If anyone can confirm for sure, please let me know.) than it is in S1 (Bedford), but I couldn’t help it; it was too convenient to have them make their great escape in the Zooniverse van.
> 
> I couldn’t destroy the Zooniverse or turn it into a parking lot. I know they were sick of it by the time they wrote S2, but precious Zoo Times!! Responsible Naboo can tuck it away safely in his stash of enchanted items and forget about it until it's time for a nostalgia trip.


	15. Episode 0: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set a good long time before Call of the Yeti, everyone settles into the flat in Dalston and we answer the all-important question: why are Vince and Howard so sexy and half naked in Series 2? (spoiler alert: secret relationship!)

Vince lounges sprawled on his stomach in his oversized bed, legs kicked into the air behind him,  _ Transformer _ down low on the stereo. He sighs and flops onto his face, tangling his fingers in his soft, silky sheets. 

Even though he ended up with the bigger of the two bedrooms, he feels bored and restless and cooped up tonight, as melancholy as Lou sounds on  _ Satellite of Love _ when he wants to feel as sparkly and vivacious as Bowie swooping in behind him during the fadeout.

His room is really a shambles, a grade A disaster area if he ever saw one, tubes of lipgloss in the sheets and wrappers from sweets littered on his bedside table. He had to beg Naboo for days to magic him up a larger closet space to match the size of the room, and drainpipes and blouses and vintage jackets are still bursting out of the doors. 

His painted t-shirts and bootcut trousers are tucked all the way at the back, his cowboy boots lined up haphazardly underneath. ‘S’nothing personal, really; he just fancied trying out a new look. New flat, new job, trying to be Dalston’s greatest frontman in his and Howard’s new band… throwing shapes in stiff trousers just ain’t on.

Vince feels a tug in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about his Zooniverse jacket, hung up all the way at the very back of the closet, with Howard’s larger jacket draped over the top of it on the hanger. A space-saving measure, that was all.

He presses his hips into the mattress, remembering the weight of Howard's jacket draped over his own on their last night at the Zooniverse. Seeing Howard's jacket draped over his own, tangled in a box of pencils where it had been thrown on their last night. Feeling Howard’s huge warm hands sliding down his stiff trousers… err… stiff…  _ something _ on their last night at the Zooniverse.

Vince blinks and redirects his thoughts to the glimmering bolt of sequinned fabric tossed over his sewing station and the piles of fashion and music mags stacked like art installations in the corners of the room. He knows he should tidy up, but he doesn’t feel like tidying. He feels full of energy with nowhere he wants to direct it. 

Well. He knows one place he wants to direct it, and one person he wants to direct it at: Howard's smaller room, in muted shades of taupe and cream, and Howard. There’s only one problem: the walls of the flat are much too thin for the methods of energy directing Vince has in mind.

_ Energy directing? Stiff something? _ Clearly, the mess and being cooped up in the flat is getting to him if he can’t even think what he wants to think out loud in his head. He lifts the needle off of  _ Transformer _ , and steps into the hallway.

Howard’s door is shut, but he can hear voices in the sitting room, and the clang of pots and pans in the kitchen. He can’t pinpoint the smell wafting down the hall from the kitchen. Maybe a snack will help distract him.

Naboo’s reclining on the sofa, glasses perched on his nose, reading multiple choice questions on spell classification out loud to Bollo. Bollo is at the kitchen counter in his best white apron, dicing bananas and a flattened turnip, tossing ends and peels into the bin and bits of fruit and veg into a bubbling pot on the stove. Vince wrinkles his nose when Bollo gets distracted by another pot boiling over, and banana peel makes it into the pot instead of the bin. 

Howard's sitting at the kitchen table, one hand drumming the tabletop, one methodically circling ads. Now that he’s finished his renovations on the van, he’s always on the lookout for an opportunity to score a good gig.

While Vince had worked on their stage clothes, Howard had worked on the van by himself, adding a second row of seats and some funky curtains and seat covers Vince had knocked up as practice on his sewing machine. He’d worked for three days straight modifying the van’s cargo area. On morning four, Naboo questioned him with a raised brow as to how much longer he'd be causing a racket working on the van out front.

Howard insisted he couldn't stop until it was perfect. "You know, to be able to transport equipment safely and securely to and from gigs. A real mark of our professionalism as performers. We show up with an extraordinary equipment setup in our van, even before we're on stage? Bam! Streets ahead of the competition. We impress the promoter without even playing a note, they bring us back for a residency-" 

"Maybe if you’re aiming for a residency as professional roadies,” Naboo snarked.

Howard scowled back at him. "It won't be too much longer; I have to finish the soundproofing this morning and then I'll be done."

Naboo looked at Howard above the tops of his reading glasses, mouth open, considering whether it was worthwhile to ask why they'd need to soundproof the cargo area before going back to reviewing potion ingredient flashcards with Bollo instead.

Naboo had insisted that Bollo complete his basic shaman’s familiar coursework before starting his DJ residency at the end of July. As far as Vince could tell, it seemed to consist of Bollo reading a shelf full of very thick, very ancient, very dusty books with very few pictures. Slow going, meaning Naboo and Bollo barely ever left the flat. Meaning Vince and Howard barely ever had a private place to… uh… direct their energies at each other. 

Vince hadn’t understood Howard’s particular dedication to outfitting the back of the van to perfection until the first night Howard had made their excuses after dinner and suggested he and Vince go out for a drive, check out the new neighborhood, see the sights. Naboo and Bollo were settling down to volume three of Mystic Mushrooms: A Brief History in Fourteen Parts (Annotated Edition, with Author’s Foreword), and Vince readily agreed before he was roped into an impromptu revising session on the origins of fungus.

They drove around the block twice, then Howard parked in the alley outside the flat and turned off the ignition. Vince was about ten seconds away from a strop, sighing that he didn’t wanna go back up to the flat yet and listen to Naboo ‘n’ Bollo bangin' on about toadstools all night while Howard did the dishes and he stared at the cabinets ‘til he fell asleep.

Howard had chuckled, reaching over the seats to draw the curtains. “You could always dry the dishes and put them away in the cabinets if you’re tired of just staring at them,” he said, a teasing lilt to his voice. When he turned back to find Vince scowling, slumped down in his seat with arms crossed and one boot propped sulkily on the dash, he’d given him a wolfish grin, and motioned for Vince to follow him over the seats to the cargo area.

Vince’s eyes had gone wide. Not much room for amplifiers and instruments back there, but there was a mattress and blankets, and it was fully soundproofed. 

Vince rated the cargo area as well genius. It's just the place he needs to visit now, to burn off all of the excess energy that’s burning a hole in him.

Vince tries to get Howard’s attention where he's seated at the kitchen table, clearing his throat loudly as he walks past, trailing his fingers along the tabletop, but Howard’s too wrapped up in his paper to notice. He's considering every word of an ad in the back section, chewing the tip of his pencil as his face silently runs from intrigue to slight concern. He finally settles on disappointment and puts a neat X through the ad.

Vince sighs, the feeling leaping from Howard’s face to settle in his chest. He turns to rifle through the kitchen cupboards, aimlessly moving aside tins of flour and sugar and a jar of dried four leaf clovers and something that looks like a bottle of dirt.

“Vince hand Bollo big tin? Top shelf, behind pear juice?”

Vince stretches on tiptoe and brings a massive black tin down, taking off the lid when he spots that both of Bollo’s hairy paws are occupied stirring two pots at once. The tin’s empty; Bollo groans and jerks his head back at the cupboards.

“Vince hand Bollo small tin behind pear juice?”

He pauses to taste from one of the pots and considers his blend of ingredients.

“Bring Bollo pear juice too.”

Naboo calls loudly over his shoulder, “That better not be goin’ in, Bollo.”

Bollo takes a pinch of dried purple flowers out of the small tin and motions for Vince to put them back in the cupboard. 

“Naboo master of familiar training, Bollo master of kitchen. Naboo trust Bollo on this one.” A generous splash of pear juice goes in the pot.

Vince resumes his search through the small kitchen, hanging on the fridge door, swinging it idly back and forth on its hinges. He checks the cabinets again; nothing interesting has cropped up since he last looked, but he can never be sure, living with a shaman an’ all.

The kitchen chair squeaks behind him as Howard gets up. Vince bats cans and boxes and jars around, the same one’s he’s already looked through twice, waiting until Howard brushes behind him to take teabags off the middle shelf. 

Vince feels a little electrical charge pass between them as Howard’s arm sails against the material of his blouse. He felt pent-up enough in his large bedroom; being this close to Howard in the tiny kitchen with Howard practically ignoring him makes Vince feel even worse.

He shuts the cupboard and taps his finger against his lips as he surveys the kitchen. He hasn't searched the unlabeled tins on the counter yet, so he picks the blandest of the bunch, best hidin' place bein’ the one that nobody expects, and pries the lid loose. He feels a little bubble of excitement in his chest when it gives.

The bubble pops when he finds dry grains of uncooked rice, all the life going out of his grip on the tin. He sifts through the grains with his fingers, letting them idly drop into a tiny rice pyramid. The feeling against his fingertips reminds him of seed distribution and Howard carrying the bucket for him when he first started at the zoo.

Howard’s whistling casually as he searches for clean mugs, contorting to reach in the cabinet above Vince’s head. Without touching him, of course; can't let on to their flatmates.

When Howard turns, he bumps into Vince, checks his hip with enough force to send the tin clattering across the floor. Vince gapes as a shower of rice coats the kitchen like newly fallen snow. Before he can snap at Howard for being so clumsy, Howard steps in front of him. 

Naboo snaps his book shut with a puff of dust and throws the pair of them a black look over the back of the sofa. There are grains of rice stuck to his turban.

“That better not be the last of the rice. Me and Bollo have a curry on for later.”

Vince wrinkles his nose and wants to ask what type of curry has banana peel and turnip in it, but Howard's got the keys to the van out of his pocket before Vince can blink, spinning the keyring cheerily around his finger.

“Sorry about that, Naboo, wasn’t looking where I was going. Vince and I can nip out to the shops, bring you back something gourmet? Can't really savor a curry without a good, hearty helping of rice, right?”

Naboo scowls and Howard points at him jauntily with both index fingers. 

“That’s a yes, then? Great. See you in an hour or so. Two, tops. Alright, bye!”

Vince barely has time to set the empty tin on the counter before Howard clamps a hand around his wrist and pulls him toward the stairs.

Once they’ve walked at a measured pace over a respectable distance, enough to be out of earshot in the stairwell, Vince has his hands all over Howard. It doesn't make going downstairs any easier or faster, Vince trying to grind his hips into Howard's back. 

Howard's just about to caution him on proper stairwell safety when Vince settles his hands on Howard's hips, leaning forward as they descend to whisper hotly in his ear, "You had me goin' for a minute back there, you clumsy Northern ox. Well clever." Then they're down the stairs and through the door, Howard's voice all velvet and chocolate, and Vince's nervous energy and anticipation is bursting out of his chest in laughter as Howard unlocks the doors to the van.

*

Naboo scans the page of his book methodically as Bollo adds more seasoning to each of the pots in turn. In between the whisper of ancient pages turning and banana-turnip curry bubbling, the heated stomp of Vince's platform boots and Howard's sensible shoes is wildly apparent. They're practically running by the time they reach the bottom of the echoing staircase; the door to the alley slamming is accompanied by the low rumble of Howard's voice and a chorus of Vince's giddy giggles. 

Naboo turns the page using the tip of his finger.

"There's those two off to bum in the back of the van again," he states. 

"Uh huh," Bollo returns. "It apparent."

He turns the stovetop off, wiping his hands on his apron. "Bollo not hungry. Lose appetite."

Naboo nods in agreement. "Hand me that book over there, Bollo. Bit of peace and quiet without all the pining and yearning stinking up the place, s' the perfect time to start on familiar's etiquette training."

Bollo groans. He's got so many bad feelings, he doesn't know where to begin.


	16. Episode 0: Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that I’ve posed my theory as to why Howard and Vince are so sexy and naked in S2, can’t end this fic without Howard and Vince getting sexy and naked in the back of the van, can I?

Howard barely gets the door to the van shut before Vince is trying to climb into his lap enthusiastically, all hands and tongue and teeth and skinny limbs flying. He misses Howard’s mouth entirely, bumping into his chin, ducking his head to mouth at Howard’s neck instead.

"Whoa there, little man," Howard says, putting his hands up as Vince slides down his body, trying to wedge himself in the tiny space between the steering wheel and the seat as he tugs at Howard’s trousers.

Vince is at his boiling point. He’s already frustrated at being in close proximity to Howard in the flat all day without being able to touch him or snog him when he feels like it. He laments all of the dark corners and unused places they didn’t take advantage of at the zoo. All the missed opportunities they had needle at him; he can feel it prickling along the back of his neck.

Well. That might actually be the steering wheel poking at him from his uncomfortable position, but he still feels like he has to make up for lost time every chance he gets Howard to himself. 

“Why couldn’t you put in a bench seat up here?” he snaps, aggravated at being impeded, at even a second of their time together being wasted fumbling around stuck between the dash and the seat.

“There’s not enough leg room for you on your own as it is. How’m I supposed to fit down there in these?” he says, pointing to what Howard can see of his very tight, very spangly drainpipes. “I’m flexible, but I ain’t a conformist!”

“A contortionist. You’re not a contortionist. And take them off?” Howard returns with a cheeky grin.

He slides onto the passenger seat and helps Vince out of the small space, cupping the back of his head before he hits it on the steering wheel and sounds the horn. He pulls Vince to him for a kiss; it's sweet and slow, Howard's long fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck as he tongues him. 

Vince pulls back with a sharp breath, the safety belt latch digging into his knee. “Come on. I need more room to work,” he says, clambering over both sets of seats to the cargo area, Howard’s hot hands on his arse helping him over the seats about as much as he helped Howard climb downstairs.

They end up in a tangle in the cargo area; Vince is somehow on top of Howard, who’s lying on his back, despite Vince being the first one over all the seats.

Despite all of his best efforts at diagramming and planning and measuring, Howard doesn’t fit lying down in the back of the cargo area. His head nearly touches the ceiling when he’s kneeling, and the seats dig into him when he’s sitting up. 

“Ridiculous,” Vince says, pushing him back to lying down as he wriggles out of his silky blouse. He tugs the blouse halfway up over his head and promptly gets stuck in the lacing.

Howard reaches to trace down his sides, pressing the see through material against his skin. He runs the flat of his palm down Vince’s stomach, dipping his index finger into his belly button, tracing down the dark line of hair underneath until he’s resting his fingertips on Vince’s zip. That’s usually enough to make Vince start squirming, but he’s still feeling stroppy, crackling with excess energy.

“Why d'you have to be so tall anyway? You don’t even fit in the cargo area,” he sulks, twisting and turning with the blouse still stuck over his head.

“Well… why do you have to be so short?” 

Granted, it's not Howard's best comeback, but his brain's a little foggy, Vince wriggling above him and brushing his arse against Howard's untouched cock where it rests, trapped in his pants.

Vince pulls the blouse back down. “What d’you mean, short? I’m only an inch shorter than you!” he says, annoyed. His wriggling has made the lacing snarl into knots; he’s trapped in a fabric prison and considering asking Howard to rip it off.

Howard’s confused. Clearly, Vince has to wear heels to reach his shoulder when they’re both standing up straight and not cramped in the back of the van. And then Vince sees his confusion and abandons his blouse and unzips himself with one hand instead. He grabs Howard’s hand where it’s fallen away from his drainpipes with the other and guides it to his dick and oh. Oh, dear. Now Howard understands.

Vince is out of his drainpipes in a flash after that, climbing on top of Howard with his blouse still on, abandoning any further attempts at removal in his haste to get to Howard. He unbuttons Howard’s cardigan and shirt, guiding him to sit up in the cramped space so he can pull them off along with his vest.

He taps at Howard's chest to get him to lie back down, then folds Howard's arms behind his head, propping him up, so he can kiss and lick and suck at the tiny freckles that softly dot his inner arms. The chiffon of his blouse tickles across Howard’s chest as he moves.

The sensation of Vince’s warm mouth and breath across his sensitive skin combined with the drag of his hot, heavy cock against Howard's stomach is too much for Howard to resist. He slips one hand out from under his head and reaches to tug at Vince’s cock. Vince freezes and lets out a low moan, his mouth crushed and buzzing against Howard’s arm.

Vince sits up, arching his hips into Howard's hand, biting his lip as Howard teases him. "D'you have the lube?" he breathes out, scanning the cargo area with lidded eyes.

"Yeah. No. Uhhh… glove compartment," Howard manages, gesturing vaguely at the front of the van.

Vince huffs in frustration when he realizes he has to climb back over the seats to fetch it. Now that they finally have privacy and Howard's touching him properly and he can feel the hard swell of Howard's cock pressing against his arse, he's ready to explode. He's over the seats in record time, moving aside Howard's old planner, clawing through the maps and papers and accumulated junk.

"It ain't in here, Howard," he whines.

"Must have fallen under the seats. Help me look," Howard says, climbing over to check the second row. 

Vince cranes his neck underneath the first and finds nothing. He looks in the footwells and the door and sticks his hands down the cracks in the seats. He's desperate enough to pull down both visors to check, letting loose a flurry of old transport and feeding schedules for his trouble. 

He climbs over the seats in a huff, tugging at Howard's hand. They'll have to improvise, figure something else out. Vince doesn't care what it is as long as he gets to have Howard's tongue back in his mouth about five seconds from now.

Vince spreads Howard out on the mattress again as best he can in the tight space, fumbling with his zip.

"Howard, you've got to change your look," he says, fiddling with the button of his trousers. Howard groans. He doesn't say anything, but Vince can tell he means, "Are you really giving me fashion advice? Now?"

"Too many layers," Vince pants. "'S too hard to take everything off back here. You need to invest in some shorts. Show off your willowy legs."

Vince tugs at Howard's trousers, finally getting them open in the low light. He nearly loses his balance in the process, feeling a bump underneath the mattress when he puts his hand out to catch himself.

Vince grins. It has to be the lube.

He reaches under the mattress, his heart pounding in anticipation, and pulls out... a box of pencils. He quirks a brow at Howard.

Howard shrugs, the picture of nonchalance with his trousers around his ankles and trails of glittery lipgloss down his arms. He goes a bit red as he grabs for them and tosses them over the seats.

"Leftovers from drafting the renovation plans." 

He reaches for Vince's dick, but Vince slides away, his fingers brushing something else underneath the mattress. It's a packet of sticky notes.

"For last minute memos. On the van renovation," Howard says, his eyes shifting guiltily to the mattress. The sticky notes are followed in short order by a box of paperclips, a stapler, assorted notecards, and a thick, glossy office supply catalogue.

"You've got problems," Vince says, giggling and flicking through the dogeared pages. "Ooo, that's a nice filing cabinet, that. Sturdy. Deep drawer space, thick shelves-"

"Shut up," Howard returns, sitting up and shifting Vince out of the way to grab underneath the corner of the mattress. He comes out with the lube and Vince beams, flinging the catalogue in the direction of the seats and climbing back into Howard's space.

He straddles Howard, letting him slick his cock first, the feather light touch of his huge hand sending shivers down Vince's throat and chest. Vince sticks his hand under the tube, waiting for Howard to coat his fingers. He reaches behind himself and starts fingering himself open, impatient, concentrating on the slide of Howard's hand pulling at his cock, teasing him as Vince opens himself. 

A few minutes later, Vince is sweating. The deep V of skin peeking out of his blouse is flushed, the material sticking to the small of his back as he pulls his fingers free. He bites his lip when Howard lets go of his dick, immediately missing the slow teasing feeling, Howard gathering all the energy in his body to settle in one place.

S'alright, he reminds himself, wiping his forehead on his arm, they're almost there, he just has to get Howard ready. He shuffles down Howard's body and Howard lifts his hips as Vince pulls raggedly at his pants, freeing his cock. Vince motions for the lube with one hand, diving to mouth at the tip of Howard’s dick as he fumbles with the cap.

Howard groans above him; Vince can tell from the sound that he's curling his toes into the mattress, starting to get well worked up. He swirls his tongue slowly, then pops off, jerking his head to sever the line of spit connecting his lips to Howard's cock. He trickles a generous amount of lube out of the tube, coating him until he's glistening in the fading light. 

Vince climbs back up his body, gripping Howard by the base and lining him up. He breathes deeply as Howard rests his hands on Vince's hips, steadying him. Vince sinks down slowly, an inch at a time, his head rolling back, his pale neck flushed, sweaty tangles of hair sticking to his skin. 

When he's halfway down, Howard slides his hands off of Vince's hips, leaning forward to slip them past the hem of Vince's blouse. He moves the fabric back and forth, letting in rhythmic puffs of cool air to Vince's hot skin. Vince hums, still moving slowly, slowly down, his thighs burning.

Howard roves upward until he reaches Vince's nipples, rolling his fingertips over them softly, then pinching. Vince gasps and twitches, sinking further down onto Howard's cock involuntarily. He rocks his hips experimentally and whines. He's been patient enough; he's been patient for days, and he can't wait for the space of another breath.

Howard's hands drift down to settle on the crest of his hips, guiding him as he sets their rhythm, riding Howard and cursing and moaning. Howard loves when Vince gets like this -  _ when he makes Vince feel like this _ , his brain reminds him. The thought goes straight to his dick; his hand goes straight back to Vince's. 

He loves it when Vince is a frenzied blur of energy and movement, babbling out nonsense and bucking his hips up into Howard's hand, clenching around Howard's cock, strands of black hair clinging to his sweaty forehead. Words spill out of his wet mouth in a constant stream the closer he gets, his voice cracking. They shatter the carefully crafted illusion of cool Vince has been working on in between breaks from sewing, the persona he adopts that floods the pit of Howard's stomach with warning. 

"Wanted you so bad all day. Wanted your hands all over me… been dreamin' about your cock in my mouth." He sucks in a breath. "Oh, God, Howard, you're so good. Jus' what I need, you're always what I need." 

He whines, high pitched and needy, faltering in his rhythm, his legs twitching where they're clamped tight around Howard's body. "'M so close. Howard, touch me, please, Howard, Howard, Howard-"

"Vince, wait," he whispers. "Hold on." Vince stops moving, his eyes pleading and chest heaving when Howard takes his hand off of his cock. Howard slips his hands around Vince's hips instead and sits up carefully in the small space. He ignores the press of the seats against his back and ducks his head before he bangs it on the ceiling, concentrating on the tight heat around his cock and Vince's fluttering moans. 

He guides Vince's quaking legs around his waist and cups his hands under Vince's arse, encouraging him to move in their new position. Vince starts to rock his hips in Howard's lap, his cock pressed between them. 

Howard does his best to comply with Vince's wish, running his hands underneath his sweat-soaked shirt down his back and over his arse, smoothing his palms across Vince's stomach. Finally, he grips at Vince's thighs and thrusts up into him.

Vince clings to him as they bring each other to the edge. He knows Vince is close again when he stops calling Howard's name and his mouth drops open, wet and pink and panting, and Howard leans forward and he's coming and Vince is coming and he kisses Vince through it, rocking into the tight searing clench of Vince's muscles until they're both breathless and shaking and sated, coming down twined together. 

*

"I didn't even know that was somethin' people were into. Maybe next time I'll hang a paperclip chain on my doorknob. Or on my knob. That c'n be the secret signal." 

Vince is giggling in the stairwell as he and Howard climb upstairs. Naboo rolls his eyes; for two people trying to make it in the music business, they really don't have any concept of how sound carries in small, tight spaces. 

Howard shushes Vince, then rather repetitively tells him to shut up. There are a few light scuffling sounds and then the clunk and thump of platform boots followed by the sounds of kissing. 

"Aww, Howard, don't be cross. It don't mean nothing, 's just a bit of fun. S'alright if that's what you're into." More kissing sounds. "'Sides, it's a good thing. Now I always know how to get you goin'. Wave about some rubber bands and a fistful of pencils and-"

Vince squeaks as Howard shushes him with another kiss.

Naboo claps his hands over his ears as Bollo drops his head onto the footnotes of Chapter 37.5 of Archaic Spells for the Helpful Familiar (Unabridged, Fourth Edition, With Pronunciation Guide) and groans.

*

The pair make their appearance about five minutes later, after more giggling and kissing and stomping about. Howard looks slightly guilty, his cardigan tied around his waist and a smudge of glittery lipgloss in the corner of his moustache. Vince looks like he's run a marathon; his eyeliner's gone melty around his eyes and his shirt and hair are a sweaty wreck.

Both he and Howard turn to head down the hallway, trying to avoid the kitchen altogether.

"Oi! Where's the rice?" Naboo calls after them.

Neither Naboo or Bollo have any intention of eating the curry that Bollo's whipped up, but Naboo figures his question is only fair after their noisy interlude on the stairs interrupted the practice exam he was giving Bollo.

"And what took you so long? Me 'n' Bollo are starvin' after-" he makes a big show of looking at the digital watch on his wrist - "nearly two and a half hours."

Vince looks at Howard, his eyes going big, and Howard looks at Vince, his moustache twitching guiltily.

"The shops were all out," Vince blurts, at the same time Howard says, "We found some, don’t worry."

Naboo raises a brow. "Right. Which is it then?"

"The shops were all out at first," Howard says, his voice trailing off. Vince cuts in. "But we drove all over the map til we found one that had rice, yeah?"

"It was beautiful stuff, high quality. Only the best for you, Naboo."

"Exactly! So we found some. Only we paid for it and then the shopkeeper, right, he-"

Vince falters, looking at Howard pleadingly. He's still a bit wobbly in both mind and body from their time in the cargo area.

"He said he couldn't sell us the rice. Yep, that's what he said. Wouldn't tell us why. Just told us to leave and never come back and never mention the name or location of his shop ever again, because he was closing down right that very minute. A real shame," Howard continues, building steam. "If I were a shopkeeper, sir, I'd treat my customers with a little more respect and dignity. If they made a purchase, they'd get the Howard Moon guarantee: a quality product at a fair price-"

Naboo interrupts as Howard gets a look in his eyes that predicts a monologue, his hands coming up as he stares into the middle distance.

"Right. It's leftovers all 'round then. Bollo, heat us up some of your Sunday roast."

Howard slides in front of Bollo as he crosses the room toward the fridge. He beams.

"Please, Bollo, that's not necessary, interrupting your revising like that. Vince and I are more than willing to nip out for a takeaway. Shouldn't be gone more than half an hour. An hour, tops."

He spins the keys to the van around on his finger and grabs Vince's hand, running for the stairs before anyone can protest.

Naboo rolls his eyes as Bollo brings a long-suffering paw up to his forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Office supplies, amiright? Howard not being able to fit in the back of the van inspired by many hours… uhhh minutes… uhhh an appropriate length of time spent staring at [this photo](http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/mightyboosh/pictures/backstage/mightybooh_bts_gallery.shtml#2).
> 
> A little cheeky nod to Howard Moon, shopkeeper, in S3. My headcanon is that while the flat was over the shop for S2, Naboo didn’t bother remembering he owned the shop until S3, and sick and tired of Howard and Vince pining around the flat, he put them to work to pine downstairs and contribute to the rent.


	17. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A nice fluffy bow to wrap everything up.

Vince yawns, padding on bare feet down the hallway to the loo, his kimono wrapped loosely around him. He's well knackered after two rounds in the van with Howard, much too tired to do his full 46-step nighttime skincare routine, but awake enough that he can probably get through his 24-step hair and body routine. 

He blinks, his eyelids heavy, and pulls himself upright before he bumps into the wall. Maybe he'll just wipe his face with a wet flannel and be done with it.

The door to Howard's room is cracked, a small strip of lamplight falling in the hallway. Vince hears Howard shifting about and sighing as his bed creaks. He hears the sound of paper ruffling in Howard's huge Northern paws.

He really is unbelievable, going at himself again tonight in the confines of the flat. Vince feels a little more awake now, his senses sharpening as he pads to Howard's door, getting a good grip on the doorframe before peering in.

Howard is sitting on the side of his bed in his pajama bottoms, his feet on the floor. He's hunched over, paper clutched in the hand that's facing Vince. Vince can't tell if it's another dogeared office supply catalogue, or what he's doing with his other hand; the door's only open a crack. 

He shifts, angling his face to better press into the space between the door and the doorframe, and freezes when he hears a slow ripping sound. 

He winces when he realizes he's snagged the sleeve of his kimono. He moves ever so slightly to untangle himself, and immediately loses his balance.

Howard freezes as his door falls open and Vince stumbles into the room, one sleeve hanging ragged. His belt's come loose around his waist, parting his kimono, the silky fabric draped over his shoulders a sharp contrast to his plain blue pants. 

Vince blinks an exaggerated blink, and rubs at his eyes. They seem bigger when he brings his hands down.

"Howard? What'm I doin' here? Last thing I knew, I was tucked up in bed! Howard, I must've been sleepwalkin'!"

Vince can tell from the expression on Howard's face that he's not buying it. True, it's not one of his best excuses. It's not creative at all; it's so standard that it borders on boring. He can't help it, he's well exhausted. Time to change tactics.

There's a slight sway to Vince's hips as he pads forward, his kimono falling further away from his chest with every twist.

"Anyway, what've you got there?" he asks, a glint in his eye, his tone conspiratorial.

"Is it Stationery Supplies Monthly?" he breathes, his lips pursed in a smirk, his muscles coiling as he prepares to pounce.

Howard shoves what he's holding under the corner of his mattress as Vince leaps. "C'mon, Howard, lemme see," Vince says, pressing into Howard's back, trying to get past his broad shoulders.

He's not prepared when Howard turns and grips his waist, blowing a massive, ticklish raspberry on his bare stomach. He squawks as Howard tosses him on the bed, pinning him to the mattress as he lies down flat on top of him. 

"Howard! What's gotten into you?!" Vince says, his voice cracking as he forgets that it's going on half three in the morning and Naboo's only in the attic expanse directly overhead. 

Howard claps his hand over Vince's mouth and brings his face very very close to Vince's.

"Sssshhhh. Stop wriggling about, little man."

Vince complies immediately, going stock still except for his batting eyelashes, the picture of innocence. Howard eyes him and moves his hand away, sitting up on his elbows. Vince waits about twelve seconds, and tries to go for the corner of Howard's mattress again. 

Howard's lips are on his and his tongue's in Vince's mouth before he gets very far. Vince forgets all about the hidden papers as he relaxes under Howard's warm, solid body. He purrs as Howard breaks the kiss to nuzzle at his jaw and neck.

"Howard," he yawns, "'m too tired to walk back to my room. C'n I sleep here?" 

"Hmm," Howard hums in his ear. "I suppose, taking all of the elements and factors into consideration… I'm too knackered from my last go round with Exotic Card Stock From Around the World to carry you back. I suppose you can. If you can be quiet." 

Vince is too tired to open his eyes. He can feel Howard's grin pressing against his throat. He knots his arms around Howard's shoulders, safe and snuggling into his warmth.

"G'night, Howard," he whispers.

"Night, little man. Sleep well."

They fall asleep tucked together in Howard's big, comfortable bed, Vince snoring gently with Howard's head pillowed on his chest.

Underneath the corner of Howard's mattress, two paper planes lie flattened, the paper textured and curly from pond water. The music notes around Howard's face have run a little bit, along with the lines of Vince's name. The script inside of Vince's plane is wobbly from being immersed in water, but legible if you squint and angle the paper back and forth. 

"Howard TJ Moon + Vince K. Noir" is scrawled, with "you 'n' me all the way" underneath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naboo isn’t the only one who kept a memento of the Zooniverse; Vince sneaking off with his and Howard’s Zooniverse jackets and Howard keeping their paper planes just felt right.
> 
> I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading! <3


End file.
